Under what circumstances, I wonder, would I actually give up smoking? What hypothetical catastrophe would lead me to down butts? Love, you say? No. Love saves no one from nothing. I take lovers according to age, solvency, willingness to do my tax returns and meekness regarding smoking. I had a non-smoking lover once (smiling, full of hate) who encouraged smoking ("It looks fabulous," he said as smoke sprouted from my lips) but he wanted me to die of respiratory illnesses.

What if I loved a non-smoking vigilante - a Nicorette-wielding Sir Lancelot? If my Alastair Campbell cardboard cutout emerged from his hiding place (behind Darth Vader, near the glove drawer), sprang to life and said, "I love you. Be mine but first give up smoking," I would hurl my Marlboros on to a fire, screech into his arms, shag it and light up. He would look hurt. "You said you would give up smoking," he would say, turning his exquisite face towards my Albrecht Dürer as Jesus Christ poster. I would say, "I lied." With men, sex and the smoking question I refer to Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady, "Each man to his own battlefield. On this one you haven't got a prayer."

Pregnancy? Would I give up smoking if I was with foetus? The polite answer is of course - foetuses shouldn't smoke because they don't have enough fingers to hold a lighter. But the truthful answer is no. I would abort to smoke, ideally at 24 weeks in honour of the late, irate John Paul II.

I have cancer? Too late; don't quit. My father has cancer? How stressful; I smoke. My mother has cancer? I smoke for her. My grandmother threatens to cut off my pocket money (50p a week). I go on the game.

My personal trainer, Michael Garry of The Connaught (whom I fondly want to clone, shrink and stick in the fridge to shout, "Don't eat cake!") believes I will stop smoking when my skin gets wrinkly. This is the vanity thesis. Michael doesn't know that all beauty therapists interrupt their discussions of Posh Spice's acne scars to marvel on the beauty of my skin.

The right answer, reader, is decapitation. Chop off my head. I will give up smoking when I have no mouth. I swear it - from my jerking, bloody corpse - on my unborn, smoking child.