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?

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.

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