When I began working in local radio over 20 years ago, smoking was the rule rather than the exception. My memory is perhaps as hazy as the newsroom was then, but I would conservatively guess that out of the eight or nine colleagues I can remember working with at the start, all bar one smoked. Me. It didn’t take long before I joined the club, but it didn’t suit me.

My head would go light at the mere puff of a cigarette but the lure of the nicotine, particularly when out in the pub, was overwhelming. My head would feel like it was about to explode the morning after while the smell of stale ash on my clothes, on my skin, made me retch. I wouldn’t think of having a cigarette again until the next night out, unlike the professionals who would reach for one first thing in the morning. I was a pure amateur.

The smoking ban came in but this foolish Mickey Mouse sort of smoking continued where I bummed cigarettes off the professionals. Never during the day. It always took a pint or two to give me the want. Standing outside the pub feeling embarrassed. Feeling awkward and afraid who might see me. No, I wasn’t a natural.

But still I continued until one morning a few years back I woke up after a particularly late night, coughing and spurting with an unusually banging headache. It was the message I needed to summon the willpower to declare never again to inhale a cigarette.

And it has worked, proving that it is all in the head. You could blow cigarette smoke in my face now and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. And I don’t pontificate. If you want to smoke, fire ahead.

Thankfully I am not alone in kicking the habit. Over the past few months at events at home and abroad, I have noticed fewer and fewer people smoking. I was at a conference recently, where, among 40 people, two popped out for a smoke at the coffee break. It is anecdotal rather than scientific obviously, but the change in the number of people smoking seems to have been very rapid.

Dr James Reilly may not be fondly remembered for his time as a government minister but he deserves huge credit for the personal crusade he fronted to make Ireland smoke-free by 2025. Advertising and branding has all but been prohibited and from next year packs will carry no branding at all. He did this against the might of the cigarette lobby and stared them down. If I walked into a newsroom now, I am sure that instead of 90% being smokers, it would be 90% non-smokers. That is some turnaround in two decades and we are all the better for it and both James Reilly and Mícheál Martin have played a huge part in that.

Here’s to you,

Mrs Robinson

I interviewed former President Mary Robinson last week in relation to climate change and how Irish agriculture needs to step up to the plate and play its part. In a tight show, we broadcast a short segment and directed listeners to social media to listen to the full interview, as happens now and again with a live radio show. I then received a letter from a very annoyed listener at the despicable amount of time we devoted to this important subject. What she didn’t say! So, the logic is that I would have been better off not interviewing Dr Robinson at all and then this woman would not have been made so angry. Sometimes you just can’t win.