Tanita Tikaram fights the fags

We've not heard much from Tanita Tikaram for a while; it turns out she's been busy fighting plans for a local pub to allow smokers to stand outside her house:

“People drinking in the pub already spill over into St George’s Terrace, leaving empty glasses, food and cigarette butts, using the garden as a urinal and as they drink more alcohol becoming louder and more raucous.

“I don’t see the sense in extending an already undesirable situation.”

Geronimo Inns, who run the Queens in Regent's Park Road, insisted that unless they were given a more lenient licence, things would remain bad:

Geronimo, which has run the pub for 10 years, warned that it would be harder to control customers without the extended licence.

In a letter to the New Journal, commercial director Ed Turner said: “The customers would be moved further along, and The Queens would not be able to manage potential disturbances.”

He told the panel: “There’s been a lot of changes and problems for the industry on the back of the change in smoking laws.

“It’s been very difficult, it’s been a big learning curve for us and our customers.”

We'd suggest that if you're having that much trouble "controlling" your customers, what you need is not to have a more lenient licence, but perhaps have no licence at all. And while, obviously, the ban on smoking has caused difficulties, what sort of clientèle are you attracting if "not pissing in Tanita Tikaram's garden" is a behaviour which has to be learned?