I grew up in a house with a heavy smoker - that was actually deterrent enough to make me (as a kid, at least) never want to voluntarily go near one of the things, ever. I absolutely fucking hated them.

The problem is, of course - being around a heavy smoker, day-in-day-out - you actually are smoking, functionally speaking. You don't get nicotine withdrawals or anything because your primary living environment is suffused in cigarette smoke - you're constantly getting your daily nicotine fix without actually realising it.

This didn't become apparent to me until the age of 18 while I was studying for my A-level mocks - I'd come back from a party, not drunk just happily relaxed and back home I found myself sitting there staring at this packet of my dads smokes, lighting one up and the next thing realising I was half the way down the thing without so much as a cough.

There was no trial phase, there was no coughing my lungs up or feeling sick the minute I took the smoke back - that first cigarette went down as smooth as if watching Michael Caine neck one in The IPCRESS File.

Obviously I put it out as soon as realised what the hell I was doing but, once I'd had an actually taste of a full cigarette, that's when my background nicotine wiggles consciously woke up and I became aware of the fact, all along, I'd actually been getting them my entire life its just, without the actual activity of smoking a cigarette direct, you don't know how to place the withdrawal symptoms until you actually experience the full blown effect.

So, no - I was never subjected to punishment for smoking as a kid because I never consciously smoked as one and, because I grew up around a heavy smoker - my father had no way to tell if I'd been smoking or not, his sense of smell was completely fried from about the age of 6 onwards, when he first to his first cigarette.

My dads mum and dad smoked, his elder sister smoked, my father was no different from me - he began smoking from the moment he learned to breath air, he was never not breathing in nicotine from cigarette smoke.

And, I have to say - from the instant I started, I was no different - totally oblivious to the effect it might possibly have on other people - I'd go outside to smoke if at a house where people didn't, but in my own gaff I smoked and smoked until I had a full blown widowmaker and ended up fortunate enough to survive.

That stopped me smoking.