Jump to full article: This is London (Associated Newspapers) (uk), 2009-08-14
Intro: Burning issue: Hockney’s iPhone artwork
When David Hockney read Austin Mitchell's whinge in The Oldie about how MPs are being unfairly treated as lepers, he scribbled back an ironic blast in response on the Government's "new instructions" to smokers and the stubborn temptations of a cigarette.
Here is an extract from his letter to the Grimsby MP.
Dear Austin
I read your piece in the Oldie and I was a bit sympathetic. The thing is Austin, that people can be very ungrateful about some things, and after all they don't always know about your work to clean up things, clear the air so to speak.
I know you voted to get rid of all the smokers from pubs. I don't know for sure how it's working as I don't go out too much now . . .
I keep thinking what it was like before your good work. Think of it: people sitting at the front in a nightclub with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and was it Sammy Davis Jr? All, believe it or not, smoking while they were actually singing ... They even had the cheek to sing about smoke getting in the eyes.
What must it have been like? Thank goodness we won't have that again. It must have been torture for some, and not knowing 30 years later that that cough had its source in a song many years before. . . .
I sometimes ponder your plans with the smokers. The trouble for me is the moment I ponder, the weed comes up ... You can get carried away by that kind of thing, the drifting smoke wandering in all directions, the lovely shapes interlocked; you sometimes don't see the reality, which I know can be too harsh.
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