All I was given was an account of the woman's torture in being put in a jail with Shaun Ryder as he smoked a cigarette. I imagined somewhere cramped, concrete-encased, with her knees forced under her chin, and little space to act as a retreat. How else could one think when told of her terrified reaction, and her claim that Ryder would kill them all if he smoked.
So, imagine my surprise on researching and seeing that this is the boxed-in, oppressive, airtight space she was talking about.
No roof, little by way of walls, much much more than fully compliant with even the quite ludicrous conditions placed on smoking areas by a committee of trained monkeys at the Department of Health ... and placed in the middle of a fucking jungle!
The woman is quite insane! Brilliant, isn't it?
She is the very embodiment of the rabid anti-smoker. Incapable of interacting with other humans in a civilised manner; perpetually thinking of herself; screeching like a crack-addled banshee; so stupid as to place herself in a position which she won't enjoy; before blaming just about everyone else for it and demanding that her rights be observed to the nth degree at the expense of the comfort of others.
She is also cowardly, loud-mouthed, terrified of absolutely everything, and in atrocious health considering she has spent her entire life looking after, err, her health.
According to her website, she is supposed to be a bit of a clever scientist** (and a little bit prone to regular bouts of debilitating illness), yet is blissfully unaware that there isn't - and never will be - any science, even junk ASH-tortured stuff, which can point to people dying from the smoke emanating from one cigarette in the open air ... in a fucking jungle.
She's perfect!
If I were an ASH tax-sponger, constantly trying to put a serious face on the fantasy bullshit of passive smoking, I would be reading articles like this through my fingers. Seeing pictures of a haggard old 'health-conscious' crone, held up as a hate figure on national TV, alongside accounts of her spewing out utterances so unbelievable as to make even ardent smoke-haters think twice about what they have been fed, while exhibiting psychosis and proving that they aren't fit to integrate in society, isn't exactly an image the publicity-conscious Shoreditch Mafia will be happy with.
For years, Roy Castle has been touted as the anti-smoker talisman (due to sparse and faulty logic, as we know), but now, those opposed to the rantings of anti-social half-wits have our own poster girl.
Cheers, Gillian, you weapons grade fruitcake, you've just made the job of painting the hysterically smoke-averse as wild-eyed, joyless, death-obsessed, reality-challenged, clinically-certifiable nutjobs even easier than it was increasingly becoming.
The longer she stays in the competition, the better.
** To be fair, the selective Bad Science crowd think she's loopy too I understand, so perhaps this may even make them embarrassed at being in the same ideological camp on the secondhand smoke myth.
