Packing It in the Easy Way

Allen Carr

Michael Joseph, £17.99, pp256

Allen Carr, probably the most famous anti-smoking guru of our times, has a problem. He really wants to be loved for the way he has helped many thousands of people stub out their last cigarette, but he does not come across as being particularly likable. Through his autobiography, I formed the impression of him as an arrogant individual, easily roused to bad temper, overly impressed by money, with a limited understanding of people, especially those close to him. The book takes us back to his childhood in Putney, south London, his grammar-school days and his accountancy career before he saw the light on 15 July 1983 and embarked on his mission to cure the world of smoking.

This is a description of his first wife, Ellen, who suffered depression and anxiety during her four pregnancies. 'I loved Ellen dearly but, as the pressure on me at work built up, I found her continual depressed state very difficult to cope with, especially once it became apparent to me that the problems she was experiencing were fundamentally psychological in origin.'

Isn't most depression? His lack of sympathy is explained later: 'I wanted home to be a refuge from the tensions and the worries of work, somewhere with a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere. It became a place I avoided.'

He walked out on his wife and four children, although this is not spelt out in the book. Instead, he spends six pages describing in almost Alan Partridge-like detail how, with his sec ond wife, Joyce, he bought and modernised a house.

The best bits of the book are accurate, honest descriptions of his own attempts to give up smoking. He is clear about the self-deceit which smokers inflict on themselves. After one particularly difficult attempt to kick the habit, at the age of 48, he writes: 'Far from giving me greater insights into the nicotine trap, these and other attempts undermined my confidence in my ability to quit, convincing me that I would always be a smoker because I had a basic flaw in my character.'

Carr, who went from one accountancy job to another, saw his father die of lung cancer at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, and promised him, on his deathbed, that he would give up smoking himself. Not surprisingly, the addiction held a special power over him.

His epiphany came when he went to a hypnotherapists' clinic to try and cure the habit in 1983, and was told it was just nicotine addiction from which he could free himself. He then came across a medical book which explained that when the nicotine leaves the body, it also leaves an empty, insecure feeling which makes you crave another cigarette. He put the two pieces of information together and became convinced he could cure the world of smoking. 'I felt like the man in the iron mask who, having discovered the key to his own prison, was now enabled to free the millions of other people imprisoned in iron masks.'

Carr, not a man short of self-confidence, set up a business using his own technique, practised at first on friends (lucky people) and then set up shop in Raynes Park, south London, where for £30 people would enjoy a 45-minute session of talking therapy. His first session, with the broadcaster Pete Murray, was a disaster but he quickly learnt how to deal with customers and make them feel able to quit.

Carr is interesting about the ways smokers deny their addiction. He is shocked by clients who have had fingers, toes or arms and legs amputated because they could not stop smoking. 'Surely no smoker would rather lose his toes than stop smoking? But the smoker might think the doctor is just bluffing to frighten him into stopping. The smoker doesn't stop, and so he loses his toes.'

He describes how. His earlier book, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, has notched up more than two million sales but he is very clear about the difficulties. There is also a refreshing blast against National No Smoking Day, an initiative I've always had doubts about. As Carr writes: 'In fact, smokers will smoke twice as much and twice as blatantly because they are sick and tired of being pilloried by society generally and particularly by those who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives.'