Lincolnshire Community Health Services Trust hosted a fun jamboree to try and help inspire some of its resident smokers to kick the habit this month.

The trust laid on a day of “1940s-themed No Smoking Day celebrations”, inviting all comers to

immerse themselves in 1940s spirit, with the retro dance demonstrators and live singing.

Now, we love a good lindy hop as next much as anyone and loudly applaud the trust for trying to make quitting the fags fun. But the trust’s choice of theme was however slightly puzzling as the 1940s was a time when pretty much everyone was puffing away like Albert Camus.

End Game especially enjoyed US fag makers’ RJ Reynolds slogan in 1946 which declared: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”

Evidently clinical leadership had a very different meaning back then.

End Game’s new and potentially one-off “ahead of their time” award goes to King James I, who said smoking was “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain [and] dangerous to the lung” back in 1604 – 350 years ahead of the medical profession. Dare we suggest that top down commanders sometimes know better than the nice family doctor?

Topics