Smoking on Film and TV.

[Mr Sloane]

"The law applies not just to tobacco but also to other products such as herbal tobacco and shisha pipes."

Exemptions to the lawWhile the ban affects almost all public indoor spaces and places of work,[7] some places are excluded from the ban, such as:[8]

bus shelters (provided they are less than 50% covered, some councils however include all in the ban),
phone boxes (but box types K2 to K8 are included in the ban, because they are completely sealed)
hotel rooms (if they are designated as smoking rooms)
nursing homes
prisons
offshore oil rigs (only in designated rooms)
psychiatric wards (until 1 July 2008)
stages/television sets (if needed for the performance, except in rehearsals)
specialist tobacconists in relation to sampling cigars and/or pipe tobacco.
Smoking is also permitted in the Palace of Westminster,[9] as it is for other palaces, although members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords agreed to observe the ban and ban all smoking in the palace except for four designated outside areas.[10]

Smoking is allowed in a private house, but one must not smoke in areas that one works in, or in "public" areas such as shared corridors.

Although prisons and hotel rooms are exempt, university halls of residence pose a dilemma for defining what is public and private. Some universities have imposed a blanket ban including halls of residence and some have not.[

[Moor Larkin]

It did strike me the other day how I keep seeing smoking by characters on TV or in recent films. who have no apparent dramatic need to do so, but nevertheless still are. I would guess fags and booze are as essential to the perpetrators of the dramatic arts as ever they were and so writers/ directors/actors just naturally include them, without even thinking about it. It's the same with booze I guess. I know Len Fairclough was just drinking cold tea in between going up and down ladders back in the day, but his dramatic inheritors seem to make the Rovers the busiest pub in the entire country these days (from what I've seen locally - glancing though the pub windows as I walk home in the dark)

...... where's the smoking smiley?

[Mortdecai]

"The law applies not just to tobacco but also to other products such as herbal tobacco and shisha pipes."

Exemptions to the lawWhile the ban affects almost all public indoor spaces and places of work,[7] some places are excluded from the ban, such as:[8]

bus shelters (provided they are less than 50% covered, some councils however include all in the ban),
phone boxes (but box types K2 to K8 are included in the ban, because they are completely sealed)
hotel rooms (if they are designated as smoking rooms)
nursing homes
prisons
offshore oil rigs (only in designated rooms)
psychiatric wards (until 1 July 2008)
stages/television sets (if needed for the performance, except in rehearsals)
specialist tobacconists in relation to sampling cigars and/or pipe tobacco.
Smoking is also permitted in the Palace of Westminster,[9] as it is for other palaces, although members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords agreed to observe the ban and ban all smoking in the palace except for four designated outside areas.[10]

Smoking is allowed in a private house, but one must not smoke in areas that one works in, or in "public" areas such as shared corridors.

Although prisons and hotel rooms are exempt, university halls of residence pose a dilemma for defining what is public and private. Some universities have imposed a blanket ban including halls of residence and some have not.[

Thanks for that Mr Sloane.
I'm an ex - smoker who rarely visits pubs these days, so I'm not rabidly for or against a smoking ban.
I am glad it's still allowed to be depicted on screen though, especially in a historical context concerning the Sixties, Seventies etc. Not to would be unrealistic. What I can't stand is when people call for things like Paul McCartneys fag to be airbrushed from the cover of Abbey Road.
Leave it alone.

[wadey]

In America where the laws are even stricter and everybody sues everybody how do they go about filming Mad Men ?
It jars when I see Lady Penelope smoking in Thunderbirds and I think it should be edited out and no smoking on telly 'til after 9pm

Before you all kick off I smoke myself

[icetorch]

Before you all kick off I smoke myself

You smoke YOURSELF? I think you're in urgent need of help. Do you let anyone else smoke you? Now, isn't there a scene in Barbarella where some person is being smoked?

[whitstablejim]

Going back to the 60's and 70's The Prop's use to hand out free cigarettes to the crowd for some of the scenes.

[cassidy]

Going back even further to the 50's even the doctors smoked in films. How times have changed, but I'll bet there's plenty who still have that famous three course breakfast of a cup of tea, a cigarette and a cough !

Going back to the 60's and 70's The Prop's use to hand out free cigarettes to the crowd for some of the scenes.

[Mark O]

It jars when I see Lady Penelope smoking in Thunderbirds and I think it should be edited out and no smoking on telly 'til after 9pm

I hope not, Thunderbirds wouldn't be the same without Lady P's long cigarette holder, some of the lads smoked also, I doubt if children of today would be 'corrupted' by seeing the puppets smoke, it didn't corrupt me back in the day, it seemed everyone smoked and I didn't give the stink or anything else about elders around me having a puff a second thought.

Plenty of fag smoking going on every week in pre-watershed Coronation street, Liz McDonald, Deirdre, Becky, Peter, Steve, they all smoke enough between them to smoke a boatload of kippers.

[TimR]

In America where the laws are even stricter and everybody sues everybody how do they go about filming Mad Men ?..

Since they are all on the same set it seems unlikely they will sue each other - but you never know.

Every detail on that show is brilliantly accurate. My dad was one of the mad men on Madison Avenue in the heyday of the early 60s. He wore the Botany 500 suits and came up with slogans. He also smoked constantly. He died in his early 60s of lung cancer.