WE ARE ALL VICTIMS OF PASSIVE SMOKING

If Ken Clarke thought that being on the board of a tobacco company was proving tricky to balance with his Prime Ministerial ambitions before, the announcement by Mariah Carey that she owes her over-octaved voice to cigarettes is going to make it damn nigh impossible:

“It’s true. The two lowest octaves are probably there because of the smoking,” a champagne-sipping Carey told Swedish mag Groove, according to a translation. “But of course it’s not good to smoke. I always had a cold and constant throatache.” So she quit, she said. “One day I promised God that if he would give me my voice back I would never smoke again. I got three octaves back after quitting.”

What sort of deal are you cutting there, God? Since not smoking is good for you, making a deal that you'll quit if God does something nice for you is like saying "if you let me win the lottery, I promise I'll buy myself a pair of comfy slippers and a nice hat." Besides, God probably wants you to smoke - he's got a consultancy role at British American Tobacco, hasn't he?

The Carey interview then gets a little snippy:

But Carey was drinking alcohol, pointed out the interviewer. “Doesn’t alcohol dry out your vocal cords?” she was asked. “Well, what dries the cords out isn’t the … do you sing? I have a feeling that you are a singer.” The interviewer said no. “Okay,” replied Carey. “Let’s stop the tape and rewind.”

We wonder what the "are you a singer" bit was - could Mariah have been hoping to communicate "you and I both know it's all down to what the producers do, all I have to do is turn up in a push-up bra with my undercarriage primed" by a series of nods and winks?

music mariah carey cigarettes