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• TV presenter joins London day of action against BAT 

Television entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne joined campaigners outside the London headquarters of British American Tobacco today as shareholders arrived for the company's annual general meeting. [1]

The Day of Protest was organised by the campaigning charity ASH, which has been researching BAT's activities in Africa. Its report, BAT's African Footprint, says that while smoking is declining in the West, BAT's profits in Asia and Africa grew by £2 million to £470 million last year.

Mr Bannatyne, the business philanthropist on TV's Dragon's Den, is a fierce anti-smoker. He had arrived back in the UK after a two-week trip to Africa to investigate BAT's involvement in the tobacco trade there for himself. "I was making a documentary for BBC2 ," he said. "I have been looking at their marketing tactics all over Africa and I don't like what I have seen."

He said he would be posting his views on YouTube, and asking members of the public to join him at the tobacco corporation's next year's annual meeting - by buying a single BAT share, giving them the right to attend the meeting and ask questions.

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