ON the cover of the Arctic Monkeys' album is a photograph of a friend of the band's smoking a cigarette. On the CD itself there is a photograph of a full ashtray. The cover photo is simple and stark - a young man looks balefully at the camera while pulling on a cigarette.
It's done up like one of those passport photographs. The man's Barry McGuigan-style moustache gives the image a slight spiv feel. It's a good image, but hardly arresting and unlikely to feature in any best album cover lists.
The director of public health science with the National Health Service in Scotland, Dr Laurence Gruer, is not happy about the photograph. Operating on his own logical plane, he says that "the album cover reinforces the idea that smoking is okay". The level of extrapolation here is wonderful - it's like something from one of those 1950s US educational films about how having a single pull of a joint will irrevocably ruin your life.
Dr Gruer adds: "This is the fastest-selling album in British history, but it gives out the wrong image. With a blatant image of a guy smoking, it will be seen by many as a cool thing to do." The use of the word "blatant" here is pretty novel by any standards, but it's his summing up which impresses most: "Although the band is from Sheffield, thousands of youngsters in Scotland will buy it because it is good music." Somewhere in there are both hints of solipsism and what's known as begging the question.
It will be interesting to see if the cover art is changed for the US release of the album. Remember, U2 had to change the cover of their Boy album for the US market because its innocent depiction of a child was deemed "unacceptable". I hereby boldly predict it will be - and there will be plenty of weasel words from all the parties concerned about the change.
All it will take is some regional Wal-Mart to get a bit mouthy about it and the cigarette will be airbrushed out. This is the country, after all, where psycho-Nazi health freaks have all but criminalised smoking. You might have thought that they would have done something about the use of guns in public places before they picked on the use of cigarettes in public places.
It's a pity the story came too late for Matthew Hilton, who has written an enthralling book called Smoking in British Popular Culture 1800-2000. I'm not sure if Hilton read Richard Klein's Cigarettes Are Sublime before writing his book, but he has certainly elaborated on Klein's thesis about the links between technological advances and the mass market for smoking.
Hilton shows how, until the invention of the cigarette- making machine, smoking was a habit only for the select few - cigarettes used to be hand-rolled by youngsters in sweatshops. The machine was a hundred times faster than the hapless eight year olds and, because of mass production, the price of cigarettes plummeted.
With the price issue out of the way, the tobacco manufacturers had to get around the perception that cigarettes were for effete dandies. They aggressively targeted the working class and succeeded in opening up a huge new market. Cigarettes had shifted their meaning - they were now perceived as representing masculine strength.
And there have always been Dr Gruer types. Back in 1604, King James I issued his "Counterblaste to Tobacco", while back in 1908, reforms to the British Children's Act included the prohibition of the sale of tobacco to anyone aged under 16. In 1962, we had conclusive proof of exactly how cigarettes were so damaging to our health, yet the tobacco companies still record huge profits in the face of unassailable medical advice.
Why then is there still a bloke smoking a cigarette on the cover of one of the fastest-selling albums of all time? Read Matthew Hilton's book and you'll find out.
Last word must go the Smoking Man himself. He's called Chris McClure and is already a bit of a media star. "The band wanted some publicity shots," he says. "They gave me and my mate 70 quid and said: 'Go and get a bit intoxicated; come back and we'll take some pictures'. We just said: 'Alright then'."
