Charlotte Church has been encouraging people to quit smoking by backing yesterday's No Smoking Day (you all stopped for the day, right?). A fairly notorious smoker and drinker in recent years, Church quit her twenty a day habit at New Year and has pretty much stuck to that resolution, apart from one lapse, on her birthday.
On her decision to quit the singer says: "I could hear a change in my voice and thought, what am I doing here? It's my profession. I just did it through sheer willpower. I didn't have any patches. I was really irritable for the first three weeks. I did have a relapse on my birthday, had a few glasses of wine, smoked two cigarettes. I was really ill the next day - I won't be doing that again. The one time I think about it is when I go out and have a drink. I hold a cigarette in my hand but I don't light it. It's just something to do with my hands."
Church began smoking at 16, but urged teenagers not to follow her example, saying "The longer you smoke, the harder it is to give up. It's so not worth starting."