“They’re my friends. Sometimes they’re my best friends. But do you have a friend that’s trying to kill you… because I do! “
The Accidental Smoker follows Rich Welch as he bids to say farewell to his good friend; Golden Virginia tobacco. Like most people, Rich never planned to become a smoker. It happened gradually. It began when he was out with friends, next with drinks until finally it’s the first thing he does in the morning and last thing he does at night.
But no-one ever plans to become a smoker. It’s always an accident that unfolds, as if in slow-motion and one that’s still killing over 100,000 people in the UK every year!
With his yellow teeth, a wheezy chest and a family that’s riddled with smoking related-deaths, Rich has decided its time to quit. Again... Using will-power, aversion therapy, nicotine gum, hypnotherapy, Allen Carr’s Quit Smoking….he’ll use anything and everything in the hope that he doesn’t give-up trying to give up!
At the same time as trying to quit, Rich meets leading academics from the medical world, psychologists, quit-smoking charities, anti-smoking lobbyists, pro-smoking lobbyists, advertising executives, comedians, fellow smokers, family (including his uncle who’s dying from emphysema, yet still smokes) and the possibility of a ‘chat’ with a representative from one of the leading tobacco companies.
The Accidental Smoker mixes laugh-out loud comedy with gut-wrenching tragedy. A personal and honest film, it seeks to shed new light on a subject that’s literally life and death and to examine just why people still smoke today… whilst also revealing why it’s so difficult for some smokers to quit.
Will Rich manage to quit? And if he does, what does that mean for the other nine million Accidental Smokers still out there?
The accidental smoker, 2008