Ex-smokers will soon find out if they're up to snuff By the till at my local London corner shop, there's a big crate of the stuff. "People kept asking for it," shrugged my newsagent when I started examining one of the tiny blue J & H Wilson boxes. So finally I ordered a whole load and it's selling really well. At 99p a tin, I'm getting a lot of young men trying it for the first time. The Polish builders have been buying it instead of their morning packet of B&H, too. It's a cheaper, healthier alternative to the fags, I suppose. Healthier? Sticking pulverised tobacco leaves up your nostrils? But a quick Google search seems to confirm this. "Unlike tobacco smoke, snuff is free of tar and harmful gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides," says one snuffer's website. There are no secondary health complications, and "since it cannot be inhaled into the lungs, there is no risk of lung cancer, bronchitis, and emphysema." Another site claims "there has only ever been one reported case of cancer from snuff use in the UK, and that was from a farmer in Suffolk who managed to put snuff in his ear for 40 years and developed ear cancer." Every time an otherwise placid male newsreader has a public eruption on the subject of his female colleagues, my husband and I have the same argument. Only whereas he invariably adopts the sisterly line, I tend to side with the "misogynistic" middle-aged bloke. Michael Buerk's attack on his "airhead" BBC colleagues, published in a Sunday newspaper, was no different. To say that the nation was "betrayed" by the "vacuous" BBC coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was a little strong (it's TV, Michael) but his description of the "succession of Daytime airheads" preening themselves or gossiping "with even more vacuous D-list celebrities" and generally being "cringingly inept" on the day seemed about right. In a final sideswipe at his bosses, Buerk says that while he hopes the royal baby will unite the nation in 2013, it remains to be seen whether the BBC will "get its title right." Undiplomatic, certainly, but it's become as de rigueur for older, male BBC employees to have a go at the corporation as it is for teenage boys to poke fun at their fathers. Do you take plastic? "Forced Auction: Fine Art and Antique Connoisseur," read an advertisement on page 11 of yesterday's New York Times. There followed a mouth-watering list of treasures ranging from fine art - "Pablo Picasso, Pissarro, Pierre Renoir, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, Berth Morisot" - to Oriental tapestries and Persian rugs, "fine watches" - "Rolex, Cartier, Patek Philippe" - to jewels - "diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires set in rings, bracelets, pendants and necklaces." Who on earth is selling off this lot? A Middle Eastern Sultan? A Russian oil tycoon? And why the rush? Who's "forcing" him to sell? The answer's in the small print: "Prominent plastic surgeon's assets to be liquidated following previous divorce." Plainly there's only one thing better than marrying a plastic surgeon - and that's divorcing one.