Smoking ban will leave theatre world fuming

KEN Stott slumps into his seat in the Oxford Bar. It's been a tough day for Inspector Rebus, what with the mysterious murders, the troublesome girlfriends and the office politics. What Ian Rankin's Edinburgh detective needs is a moment to unwind. He readies his pint, opens a packet of fags and lights up.

Only he doesn't. Because this is Scotland in 2006 and smoking is no longer kosher. The Scottish Executive's ban comes into force at 6am on Sunday March 26, which means only 75 smoking days left for those who like a puff with their pint.

I'm all for it - fewer carcinogens for the rest of us can be no bad thing. I've sat in pubs in Dublin, Cork and Galway since the Irish ban came into place and I can't tell you how pleasant it is to knock back a Guinness without your eyes watering or your clothes stinking.

True, you become aware of the stench of disinfectant from the toilets and the gangs of smokers lurking outside the pubs, but for the most part it's civilised. Tobacco stains, lung cancer, blocked arteries... they're so 20th century.

Of course, I'm talking about the real world. I mean the actual Oxford Bar on Young Street, not the fictional one in Ian Rankin's head. I don't object to Stott smoking on my telly. On the contrary, cigarettes are so much a part of the downbeat detective's persona that you'd object if he didn't.

Which is why the Scottish ban, when considered in full, is ludicrous. That's because, in a gesture of thought-control worthy of Big Brother (Orwell not Davina), the Executive is calling a halt not just on smoking in real places but in imaginary places too. After March 26, actors in film, television and theatre will be forbidden, like the rest of us, from smoking in enclosed public spaces. That means that if SMG TV Productions want to create a convincing portrait of Rebus, the company will have to move Stott and the crew to England and mock up the Oxford Bar there. Either that, or the character will have to mutate into some kind of neurotic with a regime of outdoor smoking only.

The problem hasn't arisen in the Republic of Ireland or New York where similar bans have been put in place, because there the legislation doesn't apply to herbal cigarettes. Here the rules are specific to the point of tautology: "A person is to be taken as smoking if the person is holding or otherwise in possession or control of lit tobacco, of any lit substance or mixture which includes tobacco or of any other lit substance or mixture which is in a form or in a receptacle in which it can be smoked."

When quizzed further on this, an Executive spokeswoman said the law is designed to protect us all from the harmful effects of second-hand smoke and that applies as much to actors, audiences and arts workers as anyone else. "If smoking requires to be represented in performances, realistic alternatives can be developed, if they are not already available," she says.

In response, Mike Griffiths, administrative director of Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, is stumped. "I wonder how we can develop something that involves smoking that doesn't involve smoking," he says, claiming the ventilation systems in a modern theatre instantly suck away harmful secondary smoke anyway.

If Rebus is nervous, the theatre world should be terrified. In the weeks before the ban comes into place, Scottish audiences can see a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives, an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and a tribute to the late US comic Bill Hicks, an outspoken pro-smoker. Catch them while you can: it's hard to imagine any of them being staged in an era of no smoking.

In this Brave New Scotland, will we be permitted to laugh at Beverly forcing fags on her neighbours, reassuring them Abigail's Party will pass without incident? Will we have to accept Jimmy Porter was merely looking back in mild disgruntlement as he fails to light his pipe in Look Back in Anger?

The Executive has passed legislation that amounts to censorship. And if the industry doesn't rebel first, there'll be a king-size amount of explaining to do when thousands of performers arrive for the Edinburgh Fringe only to be told to think again about their smoky portrayals of Winston Churchill, Sherlock Holmes, Albert Einstein and the rest.