Smokers like me are, increasingly, social outcasts, since a ban prohibiting us from lighting up in an enclosed public space came into force in July 2007. Lucky, then, that I still have one capital retreat.

Thanks to a little chink in the law - consumer law overrides the smoking ban - I can still enjoy a fat cigar at Casa del Habano in Soho. If I go to the Casa*s cigar shop, I can legally pull up a chair to ''sample'' a cigar and puff away ahead of, in theory, purchasing stogies to take away.