Private Benjamin....smoking

[MidnightCitrus]

I'm just watching Private Benjamin, and i cannot believe all the smoking!! everywhere, the bars, the airports....

did they ever make a sequel?

My teachers smoked at their desks in the early 80's

They sent us out to buy fags

If you were older than 14 they offered you one

They were 80p-£1 a pack

@FlamingoAndJohn

I was watching an old film today on Talking Pictures TV. It was about a mining disaster and they were pulling the men out. As each rescued man came out the first thing they did was stick a fag in his mouth!

I was watching the Guns of Navarone the other day - David Niven seems to spend half the film lighting a fag and putting it in the mouth of the injured Antony Quayle. And Gregory Peck chain smokes throughout (as he does in most of his films with the exception of To Kill a Mockingbird).

I remember the smoking room at my first job in the mid 90s,even as a smoker I found it too much! My Mum never smoked but when the man from the Prudential used to come round (not a euphemism, or at least I don't think it was ) he always used to smoke in our living room. Drove my mum mad but it wasn't the done thing to ask someone to smoke outside in the 80s! We even had an ashtray just for him.

*My teachers smoked at their desks in the early 80's

They sent us out to buy fags

If you were older than 14 they offered you one*
I was a teacher in the 80s - I don't think this was normal!

It was in Scotland at private school

I went on a residential school geography field trip in 1971 and over 16s were allowed to smoke on the coach and the Youth Hostel. Nobody checked the birthdays of smokers though.

My brother flew to Australia in 2003 ish and managed to get a smoking seat! I think one airline was still doing it and he was going straight through, with just the fuel stop halfway, he was adamant he couldn't do it without being able to smoke.

I went to Australia for a gap year in 2002 and they had banned smoking indoors but we hadn't yet. It felt so weird! And I didn't even smoke. It was just normal to not be able to see across the pub on a Friday night.

When I did my teacher training in 2006 I had a placement in a school with an old "smokers staffroom". We weren't allowed in, no-one was. It was so impregnated with decades of ancient smoke it had been declared a bio hazard.

I look back at many a drive to the coast as a kid, where my mum would chain smoke the whole way, little kids or no. Car full of stinking smoke. Christmas mornings where we had to wait to open presents while she had a cuppa and a fag. Smoking on flights, in hospitals, all that. My first office job was at a co. owned by a die hard smoker so it was normal to smoke at your desk, and I'm 43.

I spent a weekend in Dublin just after their ban, while we still smoked everywhere in London, and it was surreal. Being able to see across bars, huge outdoor smoking areas, a club in a theatre with lots of Dubliners scurrying in and out for fags. We liked it though and even as an ardent smoker I was pleased we followed suit.

I was in Cork shortly after the smoking ban there. It was brilliant.