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Cardiovascular Exercise with a Difference.


Yesterday I saw a woman smoking a cigarette whilst riding a bike – and couldn’t work it out whether this made it more or less unhealthy.

She came speeding around the corner, steering with one hand while the other took the fag from her mouth for a moment; releasing a plume of white smoke that she cycled straight into. It was as dexterous as it was no doubt cancerous.

Her lungs must have been working overtime. I can’t decide whether this heightened activity would push the smoke from her system more quickly, or enable it to cause some more lasting damage. There must be some sort of experiment I could set up to determine this.

(I probably won’t bother, though.)

The cigarette looked very incongruous: it was hard to draw a parallel between someone so keen to do exercise and someone who needed to smoke so desperately.

It reminded me of the time I stayed in a holiday camp in Cleethorpes. I was on tour with a show called Rock & Roll Heaven – and one of the venues on our itinerary was Grimsby Auditorium. A few of the cast decided to give the holiday camp a go for the week, to make a change from the usual theatrical digs. That was our first mistake.

It was extremely unpleasant – and the moment that best defined the experience took place at the camp's swimming pool, where I watched a teenage girl lower herself into the water with a cigarette in her mouth, light up and then do a couple of lengths whilst puffing away at it.

She looked like a steam-powered Sharron Davies.
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