Alexander Chancellor: Seduced by a Benson & Hedges packet aged 16

The government has done a puzzling U-turn over its plan to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. It had seemed determined to put the plan into effect, but suddenly announced last week that it had had second thoughts. It was no longer sure that this would in fact discourage the young from taking up smoking, so it planned to wait and look at the effects of a similar measure in Australia before taking any decision. This has provoked fury among the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, who accuse the Tory leadership of sacrificing the health of young people to the interests of the tobacco companies. And I must say it does seem a surprising development when it has been agreed for years that seductive packaging makes a significant contribution to the allure of cigarettes.

I have certainly always been susceptible to it. I secretly started smoking Benson & Hedges cigarettes when I was about 16, being much attracted by the red tins embossed with the royal coat-of-arms in which they then came. (Benson & Hedges was issued with a royal warrant as long ago as 1878, but this was revoked in 1999 because of ‘lack of demand in the royal households’.) After it stopped selling its cigarettes in tins (I see that an empty tin of the 1950s is now on sale on eBay for $45), I abandoned Benson & Hedges in favour of Senior Service, because I liked the crisp design of its white and navy-blue boxes, which were decorated with images of seagulls and a sailing ship in an oval frame. I also liked the slogan on the bottom, ‘The perfection of cigarette luxury’, which, although meaningless, made me feel that I was still in the better class of smokers.

I don’t know why tobacco companies liked to associate their products with matters nautical, but there were also ‘Player’s Navy Cut’, with an illustration on the packet of an old-fashioned sailor framed by a lifebelt, and Capstan cigarettes, named after the rotating drums used for pulling ropes and cables on sailing vessels.