Cigarette holder

[WildRosie]

Have you ever seen anybody using one of these ? Apart from Bet Lynch on Coronation Street and Mike Chapman (record producer), I haven't. I'm probably not likely to now given the direction of cigarette smoking. Do they have a practical purpose or are they just an accessory ?

I had one!
It was crap and made smoking more difficult.

They stop your fingers going yellow, and the smoke goes further back in your mouth so they stop the teeth getting quite so nicotine stained too. But really the purpose was to make smoking seem more elegant and lady like to get more people hooked

I can imagine whoever sells or sold these things would have aimed them at 'grande dame' types and anyone daft and pretentious enough to think they looked elegant!

One of my uni friends used one to smoke her Sobrani Cocktails.

@Lessstressedhemum

One of my uni friends used one to smoke her Sobrani Cocktails.

I had a rather wonderful (and now sadly long-deceased) great-aunt who used to do this.

She was TERRIBLY glamourous - she had been a model in the early 50s, then worked as a general manager type in five-star hotels in very luxe European resorts.

She also enjoyed a Martini or five, and maintained her impeccably bobbed, platinum-blonde until she died. I thought she was a Bond girl.

'Impeccably bobbed, platinum-blonde hair', obviously!

She also (rather scandalously for both the time and my rather strait-laced family) never married or had children, instead having a series of 'gentleman friends' when she retired from the high life and came back to Scotland to buy and run a small B&B on the east coast when she was in her 50s.

I knew a woman who used one. She was quite elderly when I was a child, (back in the 70's), and I remember thinking how glamorous she was. 🤣 She was a friend of my grandparents, she was always dressed to the nines, perfect hair and make-up, and very witty. She was always lovely to me.

I laugh that I ever thought anything smoking related was glamorous. Aside from her, I have never seen anyone in real life using one.

My grandmother. Again terribly glamorous. Was wearing vintage Chanel into her 80s, smoked 40 a day and had impeccable hair and nails at all times.

She swore blind her weight never went above 7.5 stone her whole life except when pregnant and her favourite phrase was “darling it takes just as long to put on ugly clothes as it does to put on some Chanel”

Died from smoking obviously. When she was in the hospital and the doctor told her she was dying she looked him straight in the eye and said “young man if you think I am dying in this hospital you are sorely mistaken, now, send me home”.

She died 2 days later at home

My mum had one that she used to use in her Soho jazz club days in the 1950s. Hers must have been going on a foot long, it was definitely used as a glam accessory. She gave up smoking before getting pregnant, so I never saw her use it though.

Definitely a woman thing then, apart from the aforementioned Mr Chapman. I suspected Sobranie cigarettes might get a mention here!

I had one when I was a teenager 16/17.
I thought I was fantastically elegant (I wasn’t) and unusual (probably was a bit).

I used one once for a Cruella de ville costume. I was a smoker at the time. I gave up with it half way through the night. Does that count?

@Thefallow your grandmother sounds epic

@Shuffletime

I used one once for a Cruella de ville costume. I was a smoker at the time. I gave up with it half way through the night. Does that count?

Yes. You tried.

In the final scene of The Intelligence Men, Ernie Wise is seen with a cigar in a holder. Those are probably more rare than cigarette holders.