Antony Worrall Thompson

Simon Clark meets TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson

There is no shortage of celebrity smokers but Antony Worrall Thompson is different. To start with, he's prepared to stand up and be counted. 'Supporting smokers,' says AWT, 'is something worth doing. Nobody else wants to because they want to be politically correct.

'Groups such as ASH,' he adds, 'are so anti-smoking they're really against the rest of society. They're very much the minority and I think one has to stand up to them because they're not representative of the public as a whole.'

Even more remarkable is the fact that, in smoking terms, he is a late developer. What stopped him? 'When I was eight or nine my mother used to make me light a cigarette when she was driving and that put me off. Also, I was a totally objectionable little kid who deliberately didn't smoke because everyone else did.'

In fact, he only started smoking nine years ago when he was 41. 'It was purely the pressure of women. All the women I fancied smoked so, being a chef, I decided to equalise the tastebuds and smoke myself. And it worked.'

Although he periodically gives up (or tries to!) he insists he will continue to defend smokers. 'I've got absolutely nothing against smokers. When I didn't smoke it didn't worry me. I believe in choice. If you want to smoke you should be allowed to.'

Scrounger

When he does light up he smokes 20 a day - 'anywhere and everywhere except the bedroom' - and is a renowned scrounger of other people's fags, including his wife's. 'I'm awful. I kept thinking I'm not really a smoker therefore I should never buy them. I do now, but it used to be a standing joke that no-one could keep their cigarettes when I was around because I would nick them.'

A businessman first and foremost (he has opened several critically acclaimed restaurants since 1981), he accepts that 'McDonalds and places like that should have no-smoking policies because of the children. But restaurants are centres of adult entertainment.'

Smoking, he says, has never been a problem in his restaurants, although Americans ('anal people that they are') sometimes complain. 'Generally, if you smoke nowadays, you think of the person next to you and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' or, if you see people are on their main course, you wait until they're finished and then light up. Most people are quite reasonable about it.'

Existing restaurants, he says, should be given a five-year period to introduce no-smoking areas. 'It can't be a screen or a row of plants. It has to be a fixed wall, which is an expensive business. New restaurants should have smoking and no-smoking areas and there should be certain levels of ventilation, extraction and air movement.'

Pubs and bars, he believes, should remain unregulated. 'A bar is a smoky environment. It's where people go to have a smoke, but if you have a pub which has a restaurant then it should come under the restaurant ruling.'

Serious

Staff, he admits, pose a more serious problem although 'Most people know that this is a smoking industry and why would you want to go into a smoking industry if you feel strongly about smokers and your health?'

According to AWT, 70% of chefs and waiters smoke. 'It's a young industry as far as age is concerned and many young people do smoke. They're working in environments where a lot of their customers smoke and it's a natural, relaxing part of life.'

'Relaxing' is not a word one associates with Antony Worrall Thompson. Rarely off our screens (or so it seems), a couple of years ago it was even suggested that he might add politics to an impressive CV. So, was there any truth in the report that he wanted to become a Conservative MP? 'I've always taken an interest in politics and with [Michael] Heseltine coming to the end of the line in Henley, I thought that would be a nice place to do it.'

In the event, of course, AWT didn't put his name forward and the job went to Boris Johnson. Possibly just as well. He accepts that celebrity politicians don't always work out - 'Everyone thought Glenda Jackson was going to be great but she's a complete damp squib.'

Nevertheless he hasn't turned his back on politics (last year he appeared on BBC1's Question Time) and would love to get to grips with the hospitality industry 'because there's a huge amount the Government could do.' The Treasury, he says, would gain considerably if he was Chancellor. 'Tax evasion is a massive industry. You're allowed to put optional service charges on a menu which means you don't pay VAT and you don't pay staff national insurance. If it's a fixed service charge you do. That's why you see so many optional service charges which are very confusing, especially for tourists.'

Licensing

He would also like to see the licensing system sorted out so the licence belongs to the person not the restaurant. 'The establishment should be licensed differently, rather like a car and an MOT. Every three years someone should visit it to make sure it's up to scratch and then the customer would know it was safe. At the moment nobody checks.'

His greatest passion, however, is organic farming. 'The Government is not being honest about the dangers of processed foods. Scientists are now saying our immune system is being damaged because of all the antibiotics in animals. I've always said there must be a link. If you pump in growth hormones and antibiotics and we eat it it's got to go through us somehow. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why we suffer so much more food poisoning and asthmatic and allergy attacks. Our bodies have lost the will to fight. I also think we're too clean, too hygienic.'

Enemy

He supports Greenpeace, especially on the issue of GM crops, but doesn't agree with digging up fields. 'It's that 10 percent of activists who destroy a lot of what they're trying to achieve because, instead of listening, the Government gets upset and treats them as the enemy.'

He's also supportive of vegetarians. 'They've got a right to be vegetarian, if that's what they want, but they need to look at their diets very carefully because they lose out on a lot if they don't eat the right things'.

Nothing, though, will persuade him to give up meat. 'I like meat, and I like the fat on meat, which is another of my vices, because it gives meat flavour. The problem is, we've got so used to the bland taste of a pork chop or a steak that we don't like organic meat because it's not a taste we're used to.'

No-one can accuse Worrall-Thompson of being bland. Thank goodness he's on our side.

First published in Free Choice, the Forest magazine, in July 1999, and updated for Forest Online in January 2003
Smoker 

"Forest is fighting for the rights not only of smokers but of non-smokers too when it challenges arrogant ministers and petty-minded bureaucrats."

Felix Dennis
publisher
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