Is this the death of the cigarette?

HER heavy lidded eyes are cast down seductively, a lit cigarette dangles provocatively from her fulsome lips. Marlene Dietrich looks the epitome of Hollywood glamour - seductive, sultry and in a pose typical of movie stars of her day.

Marlene is said to have taken up smoking in Berlin in the 1920s. But she was far from being the only Hollywood star for whom smoking brought an instant cache. Humphrey Bogart brought smoking to a whole new level of popularity in the 1930s and 40s. His American tough guy characters always had a cigarette burning. And while they burned, he smouldered.

"There wasn't a film around which didn't show both the men and the ladies lighting up with a massive amount of casual cool," says Dr Joan Harvey, charted psychologist at Newcastle University. "It was portrayed as the height of fashion, it was glamorous and sophisticated - but then in those days they didn't know what it was doing to them."

Tobacco is believed to have started growing in the Americas around 6,000 BC, but it was not until 1,000 BC that people started to use the plant for smoking and chewing and the first users are said to have been the Mayan civilisation of central America.

It was hundreds of years later that Christopher Columbus discovered tobacco in the New World in 1493, triggering a love affair with the plant which would continue for centuries. It hit British shores in the mid 1550s, where Sir Walter Raleigh made it fashionable in the court of Elizabeth I.

But it wasn't long before the anti-smoking lobby came in - King James I described the plant as "an invention of Satan" in 1604 and banned it from London's alehouses. He soon had a change of heart, however, and went on to nationalise the tobacco industry.

By 1830 the first Cuban seegars, as they were known then, arrived in London, followed two years later by the first rolled cigarettes. In 1856 the first cigarette factory opened in Walworth, England and cigarettes became a part of people's lives.

For the rich it meant smoking jackets and an after-dinner cigar with a glass of port or brandy. When the First World War broke out it became hugely popular among the soldiers who were given rations of cigarettes.

It wasn't until 1950 that evidence of a link between lung cancer and smoking was published in the British Medical Journal. By the mid-1960s the British government had banned cigarette advertisements on television, but in magazines and on billboards, advertising still went on to portray smoking as glamorous and cool.

"In the 60s, 70s and 80s advertising encouraged people to smoke because it made you seem, not just sophisticated, but much more mature," says Dr Harvey. "By the time you got to the 80s you had large numbers of adults smoking in front of their children and, because they thought it was grown up, the children tried it.

"Some of the advertisements were extremely well done, from the Marlborough advert with the big, masculine cowboy, to Benson and Hedges, with its luxurious, sumptuous gold adverts. It is only in the last decade that the idea that smoking doesn't harm anyone has really been lost as an argument."

Screen writers and directors continued to use it as a signifier of glamour well into the 1980s and 1990s. In Joe Eszterhas' movie Basic Instinct, one of the movie's most famous scenes has Sharon Stone's character crossing her legs seductively, cigarette in hand. The film even saw a spin-off brand of cigarettes called Basic.

But full of contrition, Eszterhas eventually did a complete U-turn on his thinking of using smoking as a "cool" tool. The film studios had already begun to discourage tobacco use on the big screen.

"A cigarette in the hands of Hollywood star is a gun aimed at a 12 or 14-year-old. The gun will go off when the kid is an adult," he said. "My hand's are bloody; so are Hollywood's."

Today, film directors may sway away from having their actors smoke on screen, but it does nothing to stop the stars lighting up when the cameras have stopped rolling. Those stars known for their fondness of smoking have included Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Hurley and the controversial supermodel Kate Moss.

Another factor these celebreties have in common is their sylph-like bodies, which only provides an added bonus in the eyes of the impressionable young people who take up smoking - that a cigarette can act as a dietary aid, suppressing the appetite.

There are many reasons why people smoke. A cigarette can be your best friend on a lonely train platform. It can introduce you to new friends too. Only smokers know that the most entertaining people at parties are usually the ones hanging outside the back door lighting up, striking up conversations as they pass the lighter round. There's also a certain rebelliousness to it, if you're a sporadic smoker especially. After giving up for three months, I can remember once getting caught red-handed at a party, Silk Cut and red wine in one hand, by my non-smoking, virtuous other half. Me and my new smoking buddies thought it was hilarious, all of us young and immortal, or so it felt.

By the late 1990s the tide was definitely a turning against the smoker. The idea that cigarettes kill not only the smoker, but whoever happens to be sitting next to them at the time, was also growing.

This was given added impetus in Britain by entertainer Roy Castle, who died of lung cancer in September 1994. Mr Castle had never smoked, but said he contracted his illness after years of playing in smoky jazz clubs early in his career.

On March 31, 2003 New York City banned smoking in public places followed in the UK by a complete ban on advertising and tobacco promotion. A year later Ireland became the first country in Europe to introduce a ban on smoking in work places, which included the pub.

Tuesday night's historic vote added another milestone to the long life of tobacco. But still, more than one thousand million people smoke through the world and tobacco is grown in 120 countries. Will it stop more people smoking?

I'm still prone to the odd cigarette, but I believe I'm less likely to light up if everyone around me in the pub isn't smoking. It's for the same reason that Look North presenter Christa Ackroyd welcomed the ban yesterday when she called into the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Show. She said she'd been sitting in the pub the night before and had smoked eight cigarettes. If she'd had to huddle outside, as she found on a recent trip to smoke-free Australia, she probably would only have the odd one.

The pubs, workingmen's clubs and cafes will now have to adapt to the ban. They may even get a few new customers, those who will be glad to see the back of fog-filled environments which leave your clothes smelling like the Marlborough Man's tobacco stained fingernails.

"Smokers have to come to terms with the fact that everyone thinks what they're doing is a) anti-social, b) killing themselves and c) killing other people," says Dr Harvey. "They have to somehow rationalise the fact that they're smoking when the body of evidence which is now completely clear is that you shouldn't. I think smokers will be viewed increasingly as idiots for persisting in doing something that's stupid."

Although the characters he portrayed were unaffected by smoking, Humphrey Bogart died of cancer of the oesophagus, a disease often caused by smoking. One thing is for sure, the image of smoking as glamorous and sophisticated has long gone.