Here! Have one of my death cigarettes!

David Andrews meets B. J. Cunningham, adedicated smoker who loyally puffs his owncigarettes called Death.

OK. So here are the facts. There's an Englishman called B J Cunningham who has been smoking since he was eleven. He's a chain smoker who's in love with smoking. He smokes between two and three packs a day, and already, at the age of 30, has a wak chest. He was in hospital for six days when his lungs collapsed. 'It was at that point that I did actually give up cigarettes for six months.' But then he returned to hi true love. He wears black leather cowboy clothes and has fondness for classic Harley-Davidson motorbikes, which he has been riding for the past fifteen years. 'I have had about ten of them,' he says cooly.

So far, not a very remarkable life, But then, B J Cunningham had an idea one night in a bar in LA. 'Let's market a cigarette called Death, 'he said to business partner. 'why'?, said the partner. It's obvious,he explains to me. 'When you take a packet of cigarettes out of your top packet n put it on the bar in front of you, you're making a statement about yourself, exactly as you do with the clothes you wear, the music you like, and the newspaper you read. You aresaying ''These cigarettes are apart of me''.

'So, if you take out a packet of Benson and Hedges, you are saying, I'm classy-gold packet-part of high society. If you take out a packet of Marlboro, yo're saying, I'm an outdoor type, Ilke wearing a cowboy hat and riding horses.'

'Now If you produce a packet of Death cigarettes', he continues, 'poducing a packet of cigarettes to illustrate his point, what you are saying is.'

He looks at me to make sure that I'm going to write down what oyu're saying about yourself if you smoke .Death cigarettes. But do I need to? We all know what Death cigarettes are about B J Cuningham has been telling us about them since he started his Enlghtened Tobacco in 1991.(ETC)

Everyone has now got the joke, thank you very much. We've seen the black packets with their death's head on the front and white packets which are called Death Lights, and we've heard about the coffin-shaped vending machines in pubs and clubs.

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