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time it normally strikes.’
    ‘New Brazilian health warning: “These Cigarettes Help Avoid Alzheimer’s.”’
    ‘We picked up a New York Times the other week. We were on a flight. There was a report about a study of life expectancy and the comparative cost to the government, or rather the country, of different ways of dying. And those statistics Macmillan was given – when was that?’
    ‘’55, ’56, I think.’
    ‘Well, they’re all to cock. Probably were at the time too. If you’re a smoker you tend to die in your mid-seventies. If you’re obese, you tend to die around eighty. And if you’re a healthy, non-smoking, non-obese person, you tend to die at an average of about eighty-four.’
    ‘They need a study to tell us that?’
    ‘No, they need a study to tell us this: the cost in healthcare to the nation. And this was the thing. Smokers were the cheapest. Next came obese people. And all those healthy, non-obese, non-smokers ended up being the biggest drain of all on the country.’
    ‘That’s amazing. That’s the most important thing anyone’s said all evening.’
    ‘Apart from how good the lamb was.’
    ‘Stigmatising smokers, taxing the fuck out of them, making them stand on street corners in the rain, instead of thanking them for being the nation’s cheap dates.’
    ‘It’s the hypocrisy I can’t stand.’
    ‘Anyway, smokers are nicer than non-smokers.’
    ‘Apart from giving non-smokers cancer.’
    ‘I don’t think there’s any medical basis for the theory of passive smoking.’
    ‘Nor do I. Not being a doctor. Just as you aren’t.’
    ‘I think it’s more a metaphor really. Like, don’t invade my space.’
    ‘A metaphor for US foreign policy. Are we back to Iraq?’
    ‘What I meant was, well, it always seemed to me that when everyone smoked, non-smokers were nicer. Now it’s the other way round.’
    ‘The persecuted minority is always nicer? Is that what Joanna’s saying?’
    ‘I’m saying there’s a camaraderie. If you go up to someone on the pavement outside a pub or a restaurant and ask to buy a cigarette, they’ll always give you one.’
    ‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’
    ‘No, but if I did, they would.’
    ‘I spy a late switch into the conditional tense.’
    ‘I told you, all smokers are liars.’
    ‘Sounds like a matter to be discussed after we’ve all departed.’
    ‘What’s Dick laughing at?’
    ‘Oh, prosthetic balls. It’s just the idea. Or the phrase. Multiple application, I’m sure. French foreign policy, Hillary Clinton.’
    ‘ Dick .’
    ‘I’m sorry, I’m just an old-fashioned guy.’
    ‘You’re just an old-fashioned child.’
    ‘Ouch. But Mummy, when I grow up, will I be allowed to smoke?’
    ‘All this stuff about politicians needing balls. It’s just … bollocks.’
    ‘Touché.’
    ‘You know, I’m surprised that pal of yours didn’t go back to the doctor, or the surgeon, and say, Can I have a different sort of cancer instead of the one that makes you chop my bollocks off?’
    ‘It wasn’t like that. He had a choice of different approaches. He chose the most radical.’
    ‘You can say that again. Nothing 60/40 about it.’
    ‘How can you do 60/40 when you’ve only got two balls?’
    ‘60/40 is a metaphor.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Everything’s a metaphor at this time of night.’
    ‘On which note, can you call us a literal taxi?’
    ‘Do you remember the morning after a big smoke? The cigarette hangover?’
    ‘Most mornings. The throat. The dry nose. The chest.’
    ‘And the way it was clearly separable from the booze hangover you often had at the same time.’
    ‘Booze makes you loose, fags make you tight.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Smoking constricts the blood vessels. That’s why you could never start the day with a decent crap.’
    ‘Was that why?’
    ‘Speaking as a non-doctor, that was your problem.’
    ‘So we’re back where we began?’
    ‘Which is where?’
    ‘The inverted plastic bag and –’
    ‘Dick, now we