Disque Bleu, Gitanes, and appearing Continental...

I used to work with a guy who, for years, smoked like a chimney.

That was back in the day when men were men and chimneys were coal-fired, anti-social, and proud of it.

That was before smokeless fuel muscled in and chimneys lost their raison d’etre plus their ability to make folk wheeze and cough their guts up.

Anyway…this guy easily went through a couple of packs a day, all by himself.

He smoked French fags called Gaulouses Disque Bleu which were, to say the least, an acquired taste.

Somewhere in between horse manure and old unwashed socks.

But because he was an ardent admirer of French cinema in general and Alain Delon in particular, this guy (we’ll call him Butch) felt he had to at least appear Continental.

In truth, he knew bugger all about Delon except for his movies.

But for Butch that was enough.

His proud boast was that he had seen Delon’s cult gangster movie The Sicilian Clan, made in 1969, a total of fifteen times.

He even tried to learn French.

Interestingly…the mood of the movie is perfectly match by the soundtrack, composed by Ennio Morricone.

Someone greatly admired by Butch.

Think spaghetti westerns and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood, (with a score regarded as one of the most recognizable and influential in movie history).

Think that unforgettable whistling on the movie’s soundtrack.

Anyway…Butch’s mano-a-mano love affair with Delon came to a juddering halt in 1983, when he found out about the Markovi? Affair (which actually happened in 1969).

You see…

In October ‘69, in the village of élancourt, Yvelines, on the western outskirts of Paris, the body of Stevan Markovi?, ex-bodyguard of Delon, was found in a public dump.

The investigation involved the French Prime Minister (and later President) Georges Pompidou.

Heady stuff.

Anyway, long story short…

Needless to say, when Butch found out, years after it happened, about this public stain on the character of his mate Delon, he threw his remaining half a pack of Disque Bleus in the bin. In fact, he not only dumped his iconic French fags, he was so upset that he gave up smoking altogether, on the spot.

Which leads me perfectly to what he replaced it with.

Apples.

From that moment, every time he fancied a puff, Butch would dip into a handy bag of small, crunchy apples that he carried around, and munch away until the craving to light up passed.

Naturally, because he used to smoke a lot of fags, he ended up eating a lot of apples.

So, he ended up putting on a lot of weight.

And the acid in the apples eroded his teeth.

So, he had to get false ones, which fitted badly, which altered his ability to whistle.

Which spoiled forever his ability to enjoy whistling along to his favourite spag. Western soundtrack.

You know the one.

And so it was that Butch, in a fit of depression, took up smoking again.

But this time only one pack a day.

And definitely not Disque Bleu.

He switched to Gitanes.

As smoked by that famous French songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s…

Serge Gainsbourg.

Now…Gainsbourg was mates with Delon but looked nothing like him.

However, he was definitely of the continental type which, in Butch’s book, was all that mattered.

Sadly, Butch passed away alone in New York in 2015.

He never did learn French...

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The above is an extract from my as yet unpublished (and mostly unwritten) book Ad Interruptus.

Like its sisters Ad Lib, and Ad Infinitum (NOW AVAILABLE), it's about creativity, advertising, life, and lots of stuff in between.

You'll find Ad Infinitum, Ad Lib, and Ad Hoc on Amazon, along with my other books, Love & Coffee and Heaven Help Us. In print and ebook. Waiting for you.

And the wonderful thing about all three Ad books is… it doesn’t matter where you finish any chapter or episode.

Because it will always be pretty damned close to where you started it…

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Grab a coffee, grab a chair, and grab a sneaky peek.

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