Who is Victoria Coren Mitchell, you say? The daughter journalist of Alan Coren, a journalist, sister to journalist Giles Coren, and wife of the comedian David Mitchell. She is seriously into playing poker – but when it comes to harm reduction she’s a busted flush.
“There is a way to stop smoking, and vaping isn’t it,” she wrote in a recent Guardian article. “Public Health England has called for e-cigarettes to be made available on the NHS. This makes me so angry that I want to have a fag.”
There is no evidence for vaping’s efficacy, she says, just “a load of unproved nonsense being spouted in vape bars”. Like the zealots in the States and elsewhere, Coren thinks there is only one way to quit – and her version is with the Allen Carr book.
There is nothing wrong with having an opinion, it’s just a shame she failed to do any research to support her position. Instead, we receive what one article commentator called her “sanctimonious bellendry”.
We met the feisty Sharon Clampett just before Christmas, following an argument over an unreturned electronic cigarette. No stranger to the court building, the Peterhead resident has been found guilty of assault on her ex-friend, along with her co-accused Rena Sutherland.
The court heard that Clampett had sought to retrieve her dead husband’s ecig from the home of Lesley-Ann Walker. Instead of getting the vape back, she punched Miss Walker repeatedly in the head. Vaping is serious stuff.
Chicken Kievs are serious too – especially when somebody claims they contain a surprise. "We were about to feed the Kievs to our children but luckily noticed the e-cigarette in the bottom of the box," said the anonymous parents to a reporter. “We didn't know what it was at first as we don't smoke and have never used one.”
The publicity-shy couple were stunned when Tesco replied to their complaint: “We cannot accept liability for the e-cigarette you found in the Kievs. It's unlikely the e-cigarette was sold within the packaging."
"We and everyone else have been horrified by this” although they didn’t tell the reporter who was also “horrified” by this ludicrous tale. “We have kept quiet for a month about it but are now unhappy with the outcome as we feel something somewhere has been overlooked in the factory during the packing process as the box was sealed when we bought it."
Have you found a vape product where it shouldn’t be? A bottle of juice in a box of Weetabix? A box mod in a bag of oven chips? Please let us know.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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