David Hockney
Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/
Getty ImagesIf you believe the pro-tobacco lobby, smokers have been made the social lepers of 21st century Britain by an out-of-control nanny state. Pressure group Forest describes MPs' approval last month of a law to ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces as a blow to smokers' civil liberties.
The smoking ban, which will come into force in the summer of 2007, looms large over this year's Forest smokers' awards. Predictably, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, is awarded "killjoy of the year". Rather more interesting, is the special prize of smokers' rights champion of the year for artist David Hockney - in lieu of his outspoken criticism of the ban. In a letter to the Guardian this weekend he blasts the anti-smoking lobby as "dreary" and "prigs". But aside from his hackneyed argument that some non-smokers die younger than some smokers, his main objection to health warnings about tobacco appears to be that they have "uglified" cigarette packets. Clearly a man in touch with the nation's priorities.
Hockney is not the only artist recognised by Forest this year. Maggi Hambling, who made the sculpture of Oscar Wildebehind Trafalgar Square, wins the lifetime achievement award - despite having quit two years ago. Perhaps this is because she exhibits at the Malborough gallery (no, there's no connection to the tobacco brand), or maybe it's due to her statue of Wilde resembling a pile of roughly stubbed out cigarette butts.
Personally, I'd have picked Sarah Lucas, one of the most famous Young British Artists to emerge in the late 1980s, who fashions sculptures with cigarettes. Though perhaps her comic pieces substituting chickens and beer cans for genitals wouldn't go down too well at the private members clubs Forest supporters probably frequent.
There's one prize though that neither pro nor anti-smoking campaigners will dispute - Jeremy Clarkson winning rat of the year. Apparently it's because he thinks a total smoking ban will help him quit. But one reason's as good as any.
