JENNI MURRAY: As a lifelong nicotine addict, I’m enraged to see influential celebrities like Kate Moss, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Stella McCartney puffing away

I surprised myself at how cross I felt to see that photo of Kate Moss grinning with a half-smoked cigarette on its way to her mouth. What was she thinking?

What happened to her boasts a year ago about a healthy new regime? She had launched one of these increasingly popular ‘wellness’ brands — hers is called Cosmoss — with much fanfare and said, ‘When I started to take care of myself things began to change.’

But here’s the supermodel smoking again, outside Cecconi’s restaurant in London’s Mayfair at a family lunch.

It comes after she was pictured last month puffing on a vape, a move that suggested she was trying to give up.

But clearly that alternative method of getting a nicotine hit — although I’m not convinced it’s any safer — has not satisfied the addiction of the woman once described as ‘perhaps the greatest smoker of all time’. She’s back on the fags.

I surprised myself at how cross I felt to see that photo of Kate Moss grinning with a half-smoked cigarette on its way to her mouth. What was she thinking?

Kate is not alone. Pictures emerged at the weekend of the actress and screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the fashion designer Stella McCartney having lunch outside a fancy central London restaurant with a bottle of champagne.

Maybe it was just two powerful and popular young women enjoying each other’s company in the sunshine. Maybe a meeting to discuss combining their skills and contacts to make some new, beautifully written and exquisitely dressed project designed to make us all laugh and love them even more.

But they must know that such restaurants are catnip for photographers. Their picture would be taken. Did they really have to be smoking a postprandial fag apiece?

You might say those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. That I, a lifelong nicotine addict, have no business criticising anyone.

I know all about giving in to that oh-so familiar moment when the eating is over and the longed-for drag on the calming drug will give far more pleasure than any of the food did.

I’ve smoked longer than I can remember . . . Why, then, am I so enraged by these fellow fumeurs?

I am cross because these successful women have influence and I don’t want children and young people ever to learn that feeling of longing that only nicotine can satisfy. How many girls have looked at the lovely Kate or the kooky Phoebe and thought, ‘Well she smokes so that’s cool, and it must be OK’?

It’s not OK and no one knows that better than me.

Kate is not alone. Pictures emerged at the weekend of the actress and screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the fashion designer Stella McCartney having lunch outside a fancy central London restaurant with a bottle of champagne

Smoking, even outside a restaurant, disturbs everyone around you and it’s not only the lungs that suffer. The hole in my foot, which took me to hospital for two weeks recently, was healing well while I was held captive in the ward. The healing slowed when I got out and was able to smoke again. The bloodflow in the legs and feet is damaged by smoking.

There are some, like the 86-year-old painter David Hockney, who vow their addiction has done them no harm at all and has given them nothing but pleasure. They are wrong. It’s a disgusting habit. It makes you cough. It makes your house smell so bad your children are reluctant to visit. The trick is never to start smoking; if you do, it will have you in its clutches for a lifetime. I lived with two very heavy smokers. Not the women in the family. They disapproved of women smoking and called the habit ‘cheap’ or ‘common’.

My father and grandfather did it and enjoyed it. One of my earliest memories, around the age of three, is sniffing my grandfather’s brown fingers and smelling the potent scent of nicotine. I loved it, too.

By the time I reached 15, everyone at school was talking about smoking and how it meant you were a grown-up. At home, I pinched one of my grandfather’s untipped Woodbines and lit it in the garden.

I was violently sick and horribly dizzy — but I persevered. Soon, I and a group of close friends were spending our pocket money on a small pack of tipped Benson & Hedges and puffing away behind the bike sheds at school. We were the cool kids. Little did we know what damage we were doing to ourselves and for how long we would be in thrall to tobacco.

There are some, like the 86-year-old painter David Hockney, who vow their addiction has done them no harm at all and has given them nothing but pleasure. They are wrong. It’s a disgusting habit (File Photo)

Why don’t I just give up? I have tried so many times. I quit completely for the duration of two pregnancies, determined to give both my sons the best start in life.

What did I long for after first bonding and feeding my newborn? Yes, a cigarette. I uttered that famous line, ‘I’ll just have the one.’ The one inexorably leads to two and there you are, smoking like the proverbial chimney again.

With two young boys around the house, I tried so many ways to give up. I paid for the Allen Carr Easyway method of quitting and dutifully attended his group sessions and hypnotherapy. We were taught about the power of nicotine — said to have a comparable addictive effect on the brain to cocaine.

We were made to throw our packets of fags into his fireplace and then, under hypnosis, to say, whenever we were offered a cigarette, ‘Thank you, I don’t smoke.’

It worked for a week until my assistant put a packet on my desk, saying, ‘For goodness’ sake, start again. You’re so bad-tempered since you quit.’ I rushed to the smoking room in Broadcasting House where I always used to say I met the most interesting people.

My father was my role model in so many ways. Kind, honest, hard-working and a smoker. In his early 50s, he spent some time in hospital for surgery to help his deafness. He swore it had prompted him to quit. I know that, for years, he fooled my mother into thinking he’d given up. But I knew his dog had the longest, most frequent walks any dog deserved, and his visits to his friend Eric, another smoker, were unusually regular.

Meanwhile, he kept Polo mints in business to hide the smell.

Some of the last words my father said to me during his final week in a hospice suffering from advanced lung cancer were, ‘Oh love, have you got a fag on you?’

I denied my beloved father his last cigarette and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. By then, it was too late to make any difference and it was the only thing that could give him any pleasure. That’s how hard it is to give up.

So I have every sympathy with Kate, Phoebe and Stella. I just wish they’d keep their addiction to themselves. By puffing away in public, they ignite young people’s interest in the evil weed. Because, believe me, it’s the opposite of cool.

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