James Leavey

James Leavey (born 1947, in Beckenham) is a controversial British journalist, writer, PR consultant and broadcaster who has gained some notoriety as a champion of smokers' rights. His appearance on the BBC Horizon programme ‘We love cigarettes’ attracted criticism in the press most notably from The Independent and The Times. Critics challenged his suggestion that smoking had helped writers like Beckett, Wilde and Yeats produce great literature.

In December 2015 Leavey won the Cigar Writer of the Year Award at the Snow Queen Cigar Smoker Awards Dinner at Boisdale, Canary Wharf, London. Other winners at the 2015 event included Jonathan Ross who picked up the Cigar Smoker of the Year Award and Hollywood actor and director, Burt Reynolds, who received the Lifetime Cigar Achievement Award.

Early years

The son of a German U-Boat commander and Dubliner mother, Leavey grew up in Penge and Anerley in south London. He landed his first job in journalism at the age of 15 as a reporter on the weekly periodical, Southern Africa, based in Fleet Street. He went on to write for African World, Rhodesia & Nyasaland Today, and the Royal Commonwealth Society’s African Affairs.

In the 1960s Leavey trained as an actor at the City Literary Institute and Mountview Theatre School (now the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts) and worked backstage and front of house on several West End musicals (including the original productions of The Sound of Music, Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof) the National Theatre at The Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Company (on Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pinter's Old Times) at the Aldwych theatre.

In April/May 1970 Leavey was a member of the company of 30 Mountview Theatre School students who toured America coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles. It was the first such tour of the USA by a British drama school and partly televised.

In the 1990s he worked as a member of the stage crew with the English National Opera at the London Coliseum.

He joined the Post Office in 1974 and was Centre Telephone Area's First Aid Liaison Officer responsible for training Post Office staff to deal with, among other things, casualties of the IRA's mainland bombing campaign.

In 1980 Leavey was promoted to deputy editor of the Post Office Data Processing Executive's house magazine, Database.

He then became the Post Office's official film, art and theatre critic with columns appearing in several Post Office and Civil Service magazines.

When the Post Office split in 1984 he worked for BT where he both renamed and helped to launch the company’s first computer software label, Firebird. Among other things he received a Gold Tape award from Home Computing Weekly for Booty, the first computer game to sell 100,000 copies in the UK.

He then transferred to marketing and PR in BT's National Networks and British Telecom International where, among other things, he helped launch BT's Freephone (0800/0345) and Premium Rate (0898 etc) services and was the first person to run a sales promotion (launching the 0800 numbers) on the Venice Simplon Orient Express. He was also BTI's deputy sponsorship manager and administration manager of the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World race - and wrote BTI's first international events strategy.

In 1990 he left BT to pursue a career as a freelance writer and broadcaster.

Freelance career

As a contributor to the British weekly magazine, Punch, Leavey wrote a regular column entitled ‘Sharing an ashtray’ consisting of interviews with celebrities on the subject of smoking. Interviewees included Beryl Bainbridge, Trevor Baylis, Sir Tom Courtenay, Tracey Emin, John Entwistle, Kinky Friedman, Sir James Galway, Roy Hudd, Sir Christopher Lee, Sir Frank Kermode, Sir Colin Davis, Laurence Marks, Russ Abbot, Joseph Connolly, Nigel Planer, Sir Patrick Moore, Sir John Mortimer, Lalo Schifrin, Bernard Manning, Burt Kwouk, Al Alvarez, Sir Christopher Frayling, Jerry Springer and Geno Washington.

Leavey has written for over 100 British newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The European, Daily Telegraph, Belfast Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Evening Standard, SquareMeal, Literary Review, Time Out, Motor Boat and Yachting, Wine, Whisky, Heathrow International Traveller, BBC Holidays, Stuff for Men, Midweek, Radio Times, as well as appearing on BBC Radio 4, BBC2, BBC News, Cuban National Radio, Financial Times TV, CNN, Sky News, and Channel 4, often in the capacity of unofficial spokesman for the hard pressed smoker.

He was also launch editor of Taylor's Corporate Northern Ireland in 1995 - the first business guide to the province, and wrote, for two years, the Department of Trade and Industry Invest in Britain Bureau's annual reports - all of which helped attract billions of pounds of investment into the UK.

He has more recently written regular blogs for several companies including Virgin Holidays Cruises (240 weekly blogs and nominated twice for the annual Cruise Blogger of the Year award), Berry Brothers and Rudd and, currently, The Decent Cigar Emporium in Dublin.

He is the author of the FOREST Guide to Smoking in London which attracted press coverage both in the UK and overseas (Time magazine, Playboy, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, Marie Claire, Pravda). The book includes a foreword by Auberon Waugh and a closing comment by Jeffrey Bernard. Leavey subsequently wrote the FOREST Guide to Smoking in Scotland: Where To Light Up which was successfully launched at the Edinburgh Festival in 1997.

His voluntary work over the years includes radio presenter for Great Ormond Street Hospital 's Radio GOSH, voluntary reader for The Open University visually impaired unit, Meals on Wheels for Barnet, and PR for the Family Holiday Association.

He now lives in Cowes on the Isle of Wight where he writes regularly for Cigar Journal and other magazines.