Although I'd been puffing away from the age of twelve I rarely got through more than ten fags a day, lighting my first around lunchtime. I vowed to myself that I'd break the habit by the age of thirty. However, in 1978, two years ahead of my self-imposed deadline, while waiting to pick up Natalie, Emma and Jamie from the Post Office children's Christmas party, I stubbed out a cigarette and suddenly decided, on the spot, that it would be the last I'd ever smoke.