I had recorded Sunday's Horizon programme on e-cigarettes, and watched it last night.

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting and I wasn't disappointed, in that I'm still not too sure what the outcome was.

I use to watch Horizon on a regular basis, but the one type of programme they do that pisses me off a bit is when they try to prove something with their own little trials.  This programme was no exception in that the main trial consisted of four groups of eight people [which is a miniscule sample] and with the presenter using himself as a guinea pig.

There were quite a few memorable bits that I recall [which is probably why they are called memorable?].

One was the presenter trying his first cigarette, having gone to great lengths to tell us that this was his very first puff EVER.  His theatrical coughing was way over the top [he even had a sick bucket on the floor just in case!], but in fairness to him he did say that apart from the taste and coughing that it gave a pleasant experience.  Fair dues to him for that.

There was the gink from the States [Mark someoneorother?] who is fanatical about clean air [and is one of the driving forces behind all the smoking bans – the cunt] who was filmed in an urban setting presumably breathing gigantic quantities of exhaust fumes.  He was your classic Anti – well, there might be benefits but we really don't know what damage long term usage will cause.  He struck me that he'd be happy if they were banned if it was discovered that constant vaping over 200 years causes a slight chance of bronchitis.  

There was the "experiment" where they stuck two "cloud chasers" into a box and measured particles in the air [“Good God!! Just look at the incredible quantity of particles!!”] to demonstrate that if you fill a room with vapour you'll detect vapour.  When they tried to detect "harmful" shit in the chamber they couldn't find any, apart from a miniscule level of Nicotine.  Apparently cigarettes produce twelve times more Nicotine in the air, and that quantity is negligible, so e-cigarettes produce one twelfth of negligible, which is good to know?

We had a table tennis playing doctor who actually talked about the benefits of Nicotine, but she was so damned nervous about her blatant heresy that she qualified everything heavily with some trials may indicate the possibility of type of talk.

We had an image of the presenter vaping outside the front door of the BBC offices getting sneered at by his colleagues.  There wasn't a single other smoker or vaper in sight so that he could attract all the sneers for himself.

We had a "researcher" who has decided his calling in life was to test every single sample of flavour for possible harmful effects.  He showed us two – Menthol and Pina Colada, and unfortunately he discovered that Menthol does more damage to cells in a Petri dish.  I say unfortunately because Herself was vaping Menthol at the time and she nearly choked. Apparently he has only tested two flavours and has racks of a couple of thousand more to test, so he has himself a nice cushy job for the forseeable future.  Smart bastard.

The final results weren't very surprising – cold turkey quitters failed miserably, NRT quitter and vapers were more successful.  They also discovered that a non-smoker vaping for a month has measurable physical effects.  Quelle surprise!

The summary from both sides was unremarkable – Pro-vapers were claiming that e-cigarettes were possibly the greatest ever invention, and anti-vapers were claiming that decades more research needs to be done.

Judging from the reaction on social media though, vapers seem to be happy with the programme?