We Smoked Ourselves To Death And It Never Did Us Any Harm, Man With Only half A Lung Tells Grandson

“When I was young,” 65-year-old Desmond Scully wheezed to his eight-year-old grandson Kyle Duffy, “we smoked our lungs out and it didn’t do us any harm?” In the silence that followed, the sound of the ventilator breathing on his behalf, filled the room.

Kyle glanced nervously at the machinery around his grandfather’s bed and hesitantly said, “But Mum says…”, before an agitated Scully Snr cut him off.

“Now what does she know, did she ever smoke?” The eight year old shook his head. “No! She knows as much about smoking, as she does about removing asbestos. It was the flu vaccine gave me cancer and that’s how I lost my lung. Back in the old days when they first brought it out, we didn’t know any better!”

“Today’s kids are wrapped up in cotton wool,” Scully Snr scolded. “Take my advice? If you’re ever offered work removing asbestos, take it. The pay’s fantastic, you get to work all by yourself and you can smoke.”

Kyle nodded but a moment later, thoughtfully looked up from colouring in a diagram of the human respiratory system to ask, “Grandad, what colour is…the half lung you have left?”