elizabethan smokers

Leila, 43, is a thoroughly modern woman -- a heavy smoking and drinking executive -- and points out the irony of our times. It was in the final years of the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth that smoking took off, and it's in the final years of the reign of the second Queen Elizabeth that it's being killed off.

"Because Camilla smokes I don't think Charles will do a James I and call for a total ban on tobacco use when his time comes," laughs Leila, "but even if he had such power -- which of course he doesn't -- I doubt whether he would fare much better than dear old James, the Scottish moralist, who was derided as an idiot by his English subjects."

"However. when I look at Gordon Brown -- the new British PM and another Scottish moralist -- I think of James I and shudder," sighs Leila. "It looks very much like he will succeed at doing what James I tried to do as far as smoking is concerned and this worries me."

"Why? Well, England took off in every respect when Elizabeth I came to power," explains Leila, "and it may be a long bow I am drawing but what if tobacco use made England great and the global gnomes caught on to this fact and deliberately caused British supremacy to falter by poisoning our minds against tobacco?"

"Look at how far England has dropped in world esteem since the anti-smoking lobby gained sway in our government," explains Leila. "And it's not just England that's losing ground to the nefarious anti-smoking lobby but western civilization itself."

"All of our great leaders smoked -- look at pictures of them and a cigar or a cigarette is invariably stuck in their mouths or fingers," says Leila. "Who can forget Winston Churchill who died at 91 with a cigar keeping him perky?"

"Since him, our leaders have been lacklustre puppets," sighs Leila. "Britain has gone to the dogs and I blame this entirely on the sneaky prohibition on smoking."

"Look at China, its economy is going gang-busters and it's all due to tobacco!" laughs Leila. "China is now where England was in the early 17th century. Where else would China have gained such impetus to explode in all directions? It has to be extensive tobacco use."

"As China ups its tobacco use, it gains in world power," laughs Leila, "and as we go down in tobacco use, we become feeble, stupid, fat and lazy."

"I doubt whether I'd be as successful as I am without smoking," confides Leila. "I have brainwaves like you'd never believe when I have a heavy smoking session, and energy to burn, too. Sure, I'm addicted to the stuff and would go crazy without it -- and may die an agonizing death at 92 because of it -- but what the hell?"

"Can't you guys get it? The global gnomes want to destroy British power and western civilization with it and they've discovered the secret of how to do it."

"They looked at the history books and tried to figure out how a little island off Europe -- with no significance whatsoever -- suddenly became a superpower with an industrial revolution that shook the world."

"Sure, it all started with Henry VIII when he threw off the Roman Catholic yolk, but it was only when Sir Walter Raleigh brought back tobacco from the Americas that things got really going."

"I don't think Queen Elizabeth I smoked," muses Leila. "She merely gave her name to an age and the real power was in the hands of men who huddled together in taverns smoking their guts out and thinking up wonderful schemes to change the world. And they didn't just think -- they set out and accomplished amazing deeds. All of the great scientific discoveries and explorations of the 17th-20th centuries were inspired by tobacco!"

"Without tobacco we'd still be ploughing fields and eking out a meagre living off the land, " says Leila. "We're only learning now how advanced the South American civilizations were -- and they accomplished that with tobacco. The Spaniards robbed them of their smoking culture and replaced it with Christianity. Had they twigged the real importance of tobacco, the world would be speaking Spanish not English!"

"The global gnomes came to the same conclusion I did -- it had to be tobacco -- and in denigrating smokers and banning us from using this glorious substance they are dooming us to a life of servitude and compliance."

"As more and more of us are badgered into quitting, this once great nation of brilliant minds and eccentrics will fast become a politically correct morass of mediocrity, stupefied by alcohol."

"Five hundred years of glory is over," sighs Leila. "Prepare yourselves for the next Dark Age."