Twenty years ago I came home one day and announced that I was free from smoking. Then I said I was going to cure the world of smoking. My family thought I was nuts.

I can cure people in four hours. I'd say that about any addiction, even heroin. However, people have to want to quit. They must have a reason.

Smoking is about as sociable as farting in a lift.

My system works by exposing the nicotine trap. When nicotine leaves a smoker's body, it creates an empty, insecure feeling. When a smoker lights up the next, and replaces the nicotine, this feeling disappears. Smokers have been brainwashed to believe that the habit gives them pleasure. Ironically, what they experience - and enjoy - is the relaxed state that existed before they became smokers.

Norway broke my heart. While I was there, I saw the most beautiful young girls walking down the street with cigarettes in their hand. That makes me feel powerless.

I love living in Spain, playing golf and bowls. I find the UK quite depressing.

Peter Stuyvesant was my brand - the more sophisticated smoke, apparently. I got through five packs of 20 every day.

I hate being called a guru. It suggests all that maharishi, transcendental stuff, when I am a very logical person.

I feel like a failure. Even though I have a network of successful clinics and I've written 15 books, some of which have outsold Harry Potter, I still haven't got my message through. I expected to free the whole world from smoking within a couple of years.

There were two stunning girls in my class at school, lots of pretty-ish ones and about six who were quite ugly. At dances I'd go for one of the ugly ones, because I knew they would be a bit desperate.

I was two stone overweight as a smoker. I just had no energy.

You haven't seen fat people until you've been to Las Vegas. I go with my wife, Joyce, once a year and some people there can hardly move. It is very sad.

Joanna Lumley used to be my dream woman. That was until I read something positive she said about cigarettes and saw her chain-smoking in that awful programme where she has the big hair. I think that's a tragedy. Is that show supposed to be funny?

I promised my father on his deathbed that I would stop smoking. I went straight outside and lit up.

Alcoholics Anonymous says you can never be cured. I think that's terrible. It's like they are saying you just have to make the best of it. That's how I used to feel when I tried to stop smoking using willpower. With my method, when I put my final cigarette out, I knew I was free.

Before I wrote my first Easyway book I was an accountant. It taught me to question things. People are invariably lying to you, either overstating money or hiding it.

Two of my four children became smokers. Thank God they are both now free.

I've treated all kinds of celebrities over the years at my clinics, from Ruby Wax and Dennis Waterman to Jerry Hall. Marie Helvin came in once wearing a very little skirt. That was a good day.

We do keep an ashtray in my house in Spain, but I can't remember the last time a guest used it. Smokers are very self-conscious these days.

Anti-smoking adverts don't work. They scare people half to death without telling them how to stop.

Not a year goes by without a ridiculous rumour going around that I've been seen smoking. In 2001 we sued Chris Evans for £100,000 when he said that on Virgin Radio.

Why does the government continue to recommend nicotine replacement therapies, ie, patches and gum? That's like saying, 'Don't smoke heroin, inject it.'

This is my New Year message: ask yourself when you decided you were going to become a smoker for life, how long you've been smoking for and when you think you'll stop.

· Packing it in the Easyway is published by Penguin, £17.99