I USED to be one of those people whose hair and clothes stank of cigarette smoke. I’d puff away up to 40 times a day, often with a fag in one hand and a drink in the other.

I’d lean out of windows or stand in the freezing cold on the patio and even go for solitary drives just to get my nicotine fix.

Never one to smoke in the house – which surely indicates you know very well how horrible it is for others – I was always the one keen to run errands in the car, such was my addiction to the evil weed.

The car, it has to be said, stank to high heaven, which was a definite minus point when I came to sell it. And I had suffered the dangerous indignity of blowback, when a discarded, but still glowing, tab-end that you’d flicked out of the driver’s window blew back in and scorched either you or the seat or, in my case, both.

This, clearly, was no way to live and my young son obviously thought so too because in the end I succumbed to his increasingly panicky nagging, stopped shelling out pathetic excuses about how hard it was and gave up.

It’s nearly nine years since I smoked my last cigarette and yes, I’ve turned into one of those self-righteous reformed smoking prigs who hold their breath every time they walk past a bunch of smokers outside an office or pub because frankly, the smell of fag smoke now makes my stomach heave.

But that’s not to say I necessarily agree with the British Medical Association’s latest foray in the war on smoking.

Doctors now reckon that all smoking in cars should be banned across the UK to protect people from second-hand smoke, and while I agree that passive smoking is an unasked-for intrusion into a non-smoker’s right to breathe fresh air, an outright ban smacks of a gross infringement on a smoker’s right to coat their lungs in tar.

In some parts of Canada, the United States and Australia, plus the whole of South Africa, legislation has been introduced to stop smoking in cars when children are present, and this seems on the surface to be a much more commonsense approach.

But there again, is it? If we in the UK take similar steps, is a natural extension of this to stop people who have children from smoking in their own home? Because what’s the point of stopping people smoking in the car while taking the kids on the school run but letting them puff away when they’re watching Strictly with the youngsters playing at their feet?

While research might show the levels of smoking toxins in a car can be up to 23 times higher than in a smoky bar, legislation isn’t necessarily the answer.

What’s needed is a societal consensus rather than cracking the big whip, with more encouragement geared to weaning people off the fags in the first place, so that they’re making the decision for themselves rather than being forced into it by law.

But you can’t win there either – an educational campaign showing children asking their elders to give up smoking because they don’t want them to die, led to one campaign worker in the north-west being subjected to a vicious tirade of abuse from a man saying his grandchildren were now refusing to speak to him because he couldn’t or wouldn’t give up smoking.

Naturally, it was all the health worker’s fault…

• UP TO one million pensioners have little or no regular contact with other people and face an isolated old age, according to a social policy think tank. Well, how about this for a solution?

Swap pensioners’ and criminals’ living arrangements. That way, pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies, unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, access to a library, computer, TV and radio, daily phone calls and other leisure facilities.

Clothing and bedding would be washed and ironed for them, and there’d be constant video monitoring so they could be helped instantly if they fell or needed assistance. They would be checked on every 20 minutes and meals and snacks would be brought to them. Families could make visits in a suite specially built for the purpose.

As for the criminals, they would get cold food and be left alone and unsupervised, live in a small room costing £600 a week and have no hope of ever getting out.