The Editor's Hospitality Blog

Come next Monday morning, smoking in public places will be an offence. Smokers across the nation are facing up to the fact that their way of life is about to change forever.

I bumped into a friend of mine here at Caterer's offices, this afternoon. "Why the sad face?" I asked him. "I've just had my last fag in the smoking room", he replied, with a forlorn and distant look in his eyes. I should give you a bit of context here: our smoking room is a bare and stinky place, where lone figures stand, cigarette in hand, staring out of the window at suburban Sutton's underwhelming landscape. In truth, I don't think it's the room Fergus will miss, more the several-times-daily ritual of getting up from his desk, taking the lift down to the first floor, lighting up and inhaling deeply.

This weekend will see an end to such rituals. In bars and clubs, punters will nurture a pint and a fag in a reassuringly fuggy room for the last time ever. In restaurants, diners will blow smoke-rings with the last post-dinner cigar they will ever enjoy at table. And in pubs, old men in cloth caps will stuff a wad of Old Virgina into their pipes one last time.

If I sound like I'm already in mourning for a lost way of life, don't be fooled: I'm not a smoker, and I look forward to getting home from the pub without feeling I've been kippered. And it's a fact that Caterer campaigned actively for the smoking ban on the basis that it would be benefit the health of hospitality workers, for whom passive smoking is a professional hazard.

Still, I feel the pain of all you smokers facing a lifetime of lighting up on the pavement in the rain. And I hope that your last smoke indoors is a truly memorable experience.

Where do you plan to savour your final smoke? Let us know - better still, send us an image of your last cigarette.

From 6am on Sunday, it became illegal to smoke in public places. In the name of research, I took a tour of my local south London pubs, to see how punters were coping with the new law.

Anyone who has strayed into the Hollybush on Crystal Palace High Street, will know that at times you've needed a knife to cut your way through the smog and reach the bar. Not any more. As I passed by, three men were huddled outside the door, collars up against the drizzle, puffing on their rollies. Bless them, they looked like little lost souls, peering wistfully into the pub, where their pint glasses stood on the bar.

Down Gipsy Hill at the Railway Bell, locals had the luxury of a beer garden to venture out into when they needed a smoke. One particularly heavy smoker shuttled continuously from bar stool to beer garden, just about finding the time to take his anorak off and take a slurp of his lager before it was time to wrap up against the elements and head out again.

One regular summed up the sense of smoking being ever more of an illicit pleasure, when he announced, "I'm off out for a sneaky fag behind the bike sheds".

I asked Sue, the landlady, how her customers had reacted. "No problems so far - but the rowdy, Friday evening crew, who are all smokers, will be the real test".

How did your customers react to the implementation of the ban? Did you have to ask anyone to put out a cigarette? Did more familes come in for lunch? And what was the impact on takings?

The 2007 Cateys awards are over, and once again I'm left with a roster of worthy winners, a hatful of memories and a sore head.

If you were there, I hope you had a great time. If you weren't, here, in no particular order, are just a few of my highs and lows from the night.

* I'm always amazed by how many people are involved in pulling together an awards function. As I arrived in the Great Room, mid-afternoon, a swarm of staff and technicians were setting tables, ironing tablecloths, rigging lights, hanging light curtains, even painting walls. The faces of the guys responsible for building the tower of champagne glasses were a picture of concentration.

* Sabrage isn't an easy art to master: just as guests began to drift in for pre-dinner drinks, a hapless Grosvenor House staffer managed to total a whole bottle while trying to lop off its neck with a sword.

* The Grosvenor House Hotel is looking well. I had a suite upstairs, lucky me, and the makeover has resulted in really welcoming guest rooms, and a lobby area that works well.

* Guest presenter, Dara Ó Briain, was great company during the soundcheck in the afternoon. he told me about some of his worst experiences of presenting events, including one bash where every table was festooned with balloons at eye-level - "I felt like I was telling gags to a roomful of ballonheads, and they could only see me from the waist down." During the Cateys, he described the difficulties of presenting in the round (this year's Cateys were conducted on a circular stage in the centre of the Great Room). It's a great format, he said, "because it means half of you get to see my arse at any given moment".

* Radio mikes should be treated with extreme caution. My hands-free headset mike sounded like a good idea, but its tendency to cut out through my opening speech left people comparing me to R2-D2, a Dalek and Norman Collier.

* Great food, as usual, from the team at the Grosvenor House. Marcus Wareing called the veal main course the best he had ever tasted at a Cateys night.

* Cigar-smoking Richard Shepherd doesn't approve of the smoking law, as became abundantly clear in the lively conversation at our table over dinner.

* Congratulations to Yo! Sushi's Robin Rowland for the most vigorous celebration of the night - brandishing his statue in the air, he reminded me of Sir Bobby Moore holding the World Cup aloft in '66.

* The most touching moment? Richard Shepherd's bearhug with Terry Holmes, after Terry had announced he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award. Richard's standing ovation from the audience was also a bit special.

* Chef Director at Lexington Catering, Rob Kirby's five o'clock shadow almost took the skin off my face when he gave me a great big kiss at end of the night.

* Best dressed guest? Clearly Simon Woodroffe (check out next week's Caterer for photo).

Back in the day, the Rolling Stones used to hit the headlines for drugs busts and throwing TV sets out of hotel windows.

Last week, the headlines came after they lit up a few fags onstage during a concert at London's O2 Dome. Rock and roll!

Keith Richards chose an unusual way to make his feelings felt about the UK's smoking ban, on the final night of the Stones' two-year Bigger Bang tour on Sunday night. Walking to the centre of the stage between songs, the man they call the Human Riff put a cigarette between his lips, struck a match and held it tantalizingly close to the tip - before proceeding to bite into his fag and eat it.

Cue much applause from an audience that has probably never applauded a pensioner for eating a cigarette before, and is sure never to again.

Good news for Caterer’s Stub out Smoking campaign which launched in September 2004 and called for a ban on smoking in all workplaces.

Two studies out in the past week are claiming a drop in heart attacks among people living in Ireland and Scotland, a year after the smoking ban was introduced in both countries.

A study of nine Scottish hospitals reported a 17% fall in admissions for heart attacks, while in Ireland the number of heart attacks is believed to have dropped by 14%.

According to the research in Ireland, at Cork University Hospital, the drop in heart attacks was more marked in smokers than non-smokers, suggesting they smoked less as a result of the ban.

Spare a thought for our embattled pub and bar operators. First, there was the bureaucratic headache of the updated Licensing Act to negotiate, in 2005.

Then, in July of this year, there was further upheaval and an increased burden of responsibility when the ban on smoking in public places went live.

Now, we learn that smoking ban and Licensing Act are conspiring together to place some high-street operators in a legal cul-de-sac.

The smoking ban dictates that customers have to head outside to light up, either in a dedicated space or outside on the pavement. If they don’t, license holders are held to account.

But then who is to blame if clusters of smokers act noisily or rowdily outside and become a nuisance for local residents? You guessed it: it’s the license holders – and the Licensing Act empowers local authorities to suspend licenses and impose enforced periods of closure upon them.

In other words, compliance with one law is, in some cases, directly leading to non-compliance with another.

Of course operators need to be mindful of their duties to their local community; but for local authorities to take such a Draconian approach so quickly (and examples are already emerging) is unfair. They should cut operators some slack as they come to terms with the huge changes to their commercial landscape in the past year.

Read more news on the licensing change on Caterersearch.com