No smoke without ire

Non-smokers fuming at BBC sitcom

A new BBC sitcom has been slated by health campaigners for promoting smoking.

The Smoking Room will revolve around a bunch of office workers drawn together only because of their need to escape their job for a few minutes each day for their nicotine fix.

But the eight-part series has already been accused of making cigarettes social acceptable - especially as it will air on BBC3, targeted at 25 to 34-year-olds.

Campaign group Action on Smoking and Health UK (Ash) said: "If the characters are smoking it normalises smoking, which goes against government aims. The whole thrust of the anti-tobacco campaign is to de-normalise smoking.

"This programme could, however indirectly, be conveying the impression there's something clubbable and sociable about smoking when in fact the opposite is true - it's a very anti-social habit."

But writer Brian Dooley said: "I don't think anybody who'd watch the programme would think we were making out that smoking was glamorous. There is at least one anti-smoking joke in it in each episode."

Published: 7 Jun 2004

Live comedy picks

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.