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