Funny enough, Jim Carroll, I was just thinking about ill temper and smoking yesterday. I had suddenly put together two facts about a few different friends - they were very edgy, and they were smokers.

In my experience (and yours may, of course, be different), the smokers I know and encounter are often nervy and on edge, and the non-smokers calmer.

The question of whether most non-smokers are exercised about smokers smoking is another interesting one. I've heard many more positive comments about the ban on smoking in pubs than I would have expected.

Again, in my experience, the people who get angry are those who feel that their right to smoke supercedes the right of others not to share their smoke.

I'm sometimes quite surprised by those who get angry. One of the most radical people I know, who has spent years in jail for his political actions, is so infuriated by the ban that he won't go to pubs, but instead drinks at home. He's the last person I would have expected to think that a working man's or woman's right to health was subsidiary to his own right to recreational inhalation.