DEAD COOL SMOKERS

Again, nothing to do with the Thames. Just a list of really cool people who died of smoking-related diseases. Plus some current celebrities who have been photographed smoking. There are currently three pages of them—this is page one. The moral is: even if you think you look really cool being photographed smoking, there have been lots of other dead cool smokers before you.

There are good reasons for listing the people on these pages. If you smoke, you have a greater than 50% chance of dying from lung cancer, emphysema, heart attack, stroke or mouth, throat or stomach cancer. Once you start smoking, it’s very hard to give up (but not impossible). Though when you do quit, the risk of dying from a smoking-related disease reduces dramatically. There are far too many images of famous people smoking—photographs in newspapers and magazines that make it look really cool to smoke. And there are still plenty of examples of films and TV dramas where people smoke for no good reason except to look tough, glamorous or cool. Well, it isn’t cool. If you smoke, you will probably die prematurely and painfully. So take a look at the people on these pages and think of the consequences of smoking. And in case you are interested, yes I was a smoker for 10 years. Then I gave up for 10 years. Then smoked for another five. I stopped about 10 years ago—oh dear, looks like a cyclical pattern. Anyway, this website is one way of reminding myself how unwise it was to smoke in the first place.