On to a winner
Yet he called his technique scientific and rated it highly. "It was only by the grace of God I found the method," he said, eyes clear of doubt. "It is like being the Count of Monte Cristo stuck in a dungeon all your life, suddenly finding yourself outside ... ." Still, our count began seeing patients in his front room in Raynes Park, south-west London. "We had no money, but our reputation spread." The only cowpats were rumors that he puffed secretly. One such rumor cost the British DJ Chris Evans a ?100,000 (NT$6.3 million) libel bill. "Allen Carr is under the spotlight every day," Carr said. "I would have been caught. One lie would bring the entire house down."
The surprise, I suggested, is that after years of health warnings people persist in smoking. "You know what profession comes to my clinics the most? Doctors and nurses." They and tobacco executives. "I have had loads of Marlboro men, including two directors. I thought they had come to assassinate me," he laughed. Carr was against bans and any hint of nanny-statedom: "Prohibition didn't work. You don't need to ban it if you educate people." Schools, of course, try the demonization theory and it doesn't work. "I would explain the trap: the first cigarette tastes so bad no one thinks they will be hooked, but they are." And cigarettes, he suggested, are worse than heroin because of the numbers killed: "It is a poison: if you inject nicotine of one cigarette into a vein, it could kill you."
Joyce carted in boxes of letters from grateful patients who had heard of his cancer and offered sympathy. But he had no time to read them — too busy writing his last will and testament, Scandal, exposing a conspiracy he believes links ministers and tobacco companies.
So I said goodbye to a man who may have been at the fag end of his life, but you would never know it: never had I met anyone so cheerful about meeting the Grim Reaper. And never had I met a man so ordinary who had saved the lives of so many.
On the Net: A copy of Allen Carr's Scandal can be downloaded free of charge from www.allencarr.com
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