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he Pipe Smoker of the Year award was conferred annually by the British Pipesmokers' Council from 1965 to 2004, when it was discontinued because of laws prohibiting the promotion or advertising of tobacco products. Stephen Fry, an actor, writer, comedian, narrator, director, and TV host, was the last individual to receive the honor, and he was a little perplexed, though he appreciated and accepted the award.In the autobiographical book, The Fry Chronicles,, he explains that he was primarily a cigarette smoker who relied on his pipes for solitary writing, rarely smoking them in public.
I was being profiled in the Independent newspaper in the summer of 2003. I cannot remember the purpose... For no good reason, I turned up at the appointed place with a pipe in my pocket. At some stage, I must have run out of cigarettes and started in on it. A week later, to accompany the interview, there appeared a picture of me on the cover of the newspaper with the pipe jutting out of my face at an angle, a thick cloud of smoke artfully half concealing my smug features... What is interesting, or at least revealing, about the nature of 21st-century celebrity is that it was only a few days after the publication of that interview that a letter arrived from the British Pipesmokers' Council advising me that I had been elected that year's Pipe Smoker of the Year. (Chronicles 55)
Though somewhat bemused that he would be invited to receive the honor, Fry accepted with gratitude: "It is a singular and distinct honour and I'm entirely delighted ... It makes me feel all grown up because pipes are very grown up" (BBC). He still wondered how it happened. "I reserved the old briar pipes for winter months and lonely hours at the writing desk ... there had been just one recent occasion when I did go out into the world with a pipe." (Chronicles 55)
"... it was only a few days after the publication of that interview that a letter arrived from the British Pipesmokers' Council"
Fry had been a smoker since his teenage years. "Given that I was so disruptive, disobliging, and disobedient as a schoolboy, it is perhaps surprising that I didn't smoke my first cigarette until I was 15" (Chronicles 24). He'd tried pipes even earlier. At age 14, he borrowed one of his father's pipes, but evidently he couldn't score any pipe tobacco, and he smoked tea leaves. It's unsurprising that smoking tea did not become a habit.
Fry admits that his youth was troubled. Born in 1957 in London, he describes himself as "a monstrous child, truly appalling. At the age of 15, I was expelled from Uppingham School in Rutland for various misdemeanours and then from another public school (Paston in Norfolk) before graduating to Pucklechurch Prison for a three-month sentence" (Tes magazine).
The crime for which he was imprisoned was credit card fraud. At age 17 and having run away from home, when leaving a pub one night, he stole a jacket to help keep warm while sleeping on the street, and found a credit card in the pocket, which he used. His charm and sense of humor made him popular in prison, though, where his fellow inmates called him "The Professor."
At age 14, he borrowed one of his father's pipes
Upon release, he promised himself and others that he would excel in school and redeem himself. "I emerged from prison and managed somehow to get myself accepted into university" (Chronicles 2). It was there that he started pipe smoking as a regular pastime, though his initial motive was somewhat immature. He began teaching at a prep school and, "to suit my new role of schoolmaster, I had moved from hand-rolled cigarettes to a pipe" (Chronicles 33).
His father had been a pipe smoker, and Fry was a fan of Sherlock Holmes. "A pipe was to me a symbol of work, thought, reason, self-control, concentration ('It is quite a three pipe problem, Watson'), maturity, insight, intellectual strength, manliness, and moral integrity." (Chronicle 33)
My father and Holmes had all those qualities, and I wanted to reassure myself and those around me that I did too. Another reason for choosing a pipe, I suppose, was that ... I was closer in age to the boys than to the other members of staff and I felt therefore that I required a look that would mark me out as an adult; a briar pipe and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows seemed to answer the case perfectly. (Chronicles33)
He succeeded in straightening himself out, and his talent led him to a career in entertainment. While in school, he met and became friends with Hugh Laurie, who would later star in the TV series House. The two would write and act together, concentrating on comedy.
Fry entered a play, Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys in the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, winning first prize, and in 1981 he won the Perrier Comedy Award for his play, The Cellar Tapes. In 1984, he wrote an adaptation of a 1930s musical and won two Laurence Olivier Awards. It was later nominated for a Tony Award.
"A pipe was to me a symbol of work, thought, reason, self-control, concentration"
He went on to work in dozens of commercials and voiceovers, and in 1982, he began his TV career with The Cellar Tapes, which he co-wrote with Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Tony Slattery. It was popular, and Fry was launched into a successful acting and writing career, starring in several TV series. The most famous was A Bit of Fry and Laurie, co-starring his friend Hugh Laurie. However, U.S. residents will likely most recognize him from his role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the series Bones (2005-2017), and from his brief cameo in A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Many dozens of film and TV appearances solidified his reputation, including Chariots of Fire (1981), V for Vendetta (2005), and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
Through all of this, for 30 years, he smoked his pipes. The Irish Examiner reported in 2003 that Fry maintained a collection of about 20 pipes, "his favourite an Astleys pipe with Sherlock Holmes brand tobacco, though he prefers a shorter, straighter clay or briar as opposed to the famous detective's curly Calabash pipe."
That article quotes Fry as especially appreciating pipes when he is writing: "If I am writing in the morning, I line up five to six pipes along the desk, and you then smoke one after another, each one taking about an hour. The comfort is when you are doing something, unlike cigarettes, you can clamp it in your teeth and do other things, whether tinkering on the piano, writing, or solving problems. They are great aides."
U.S. residents will likely most recognize him from his role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the series Bones
Fry gave up smoking in 2007 and felt it was somewhat of a betrayal after receiving his pipe-smoking award. "Dunhill and the event's organizers went to great trouble to make me my special pipe, mix me my own blend of tobacco, and embrace me as one of their own. Now there I was, just three years later, planning to leave the fold. (Chronicle 54)
The award itself was a trophy that appeared to be a BBC-style microphone on a base of three books with titles pertaining to writing, cricket, and pipe smoking, but it was also a Dunhill pipe:
On the shelf by my desk in my London house, there stood a strange object. Designed and built by the Dunhill company, it seemed to be an old-fashioned BBC radio microphone. Disassemble and reassemble ... and it became a pipe. This fine trophy had been presented to me a few years previously when I was named Pipe Smoker of the Year. On account of this, I now felt a slight twinge of guilt at the thought of quitting. I picked the award up and, like a child with a Transformer toy, twisted, snapped, prised, and pushed it into its alternative shape. (Chronicles 54)
"Dunhill and the event's organizers went to great trouble to make me my special pipe, mix me my own blend of tobacco, and embrace me as one of their own."
He had tried quitting smoking when he was 30, but failed, lasting only a week before a writing project convinced him that, for composition, he needed to smoke. He had quit using cocaine without any withdrawal or other impediments, and he never touched it again, but he kept coming back to smoking, which he describes in The Fry Chronicle:
A fire is blazing, and I sit down with a pile of exercise books for marking. Before I begin the business of correcting, I fish the pipe from the pocket of my tweed jacket. I bring out with it a Smoker's Friend — combination pen-knife, reamer, tamper, and bradawl. I fiddle and scrape and poke for a while, banging out the dottle from my previous pipeful into an ashtray and puffing down the stem like a horn player warming up his trumpet. Next, I prise open a tin of Player's Whisky Flake and peel back a single layer of firm, slightly moist tobacco. The sweet woody smell laced with something that may or may not be the whisky that the brand name promises rises up to greet me like a holy balm. I lay the wedge in my left hand and with the tips of the fingers of my right I begin to massage it into the palm with a firm circular motion. Most pipe smokers prefer a pouch of ready-rubbed, but for me, the ritual of loosening and shredding a pressed wafer of tobacco is almost as important as the inhalation of smoke itself. (37)
He found a great deal of satisfaction in smoking, as is obvious from his description: "I am at the steady puffing stage now, as content as any human on the planet — a self-fulfilling contentment that only a pipe can provide: pipe smokers look content, they know themselves to be a symbol of old-fashioned contentment, and therefore they are content." (40)
He seemed to feel guilty about quitting, which he considered almost "a betrayal of the smoking cause. 'Betrayal' and 'cause' are perhaps hysterical and self-important words to use, but smoking to me was a cause; it had always symbolized in my mind something enormous. I have mentioned Sherlock Holmes, but the fact is that almost all my heroes were not just figures who happened to smoke, but more than that, active, proud, and positive smokers. They didn't just smoke in the world, they smoked at the world." (Chronicle 56)
"I fiddle and scrape and poke for a while, banging out the dottle from my previous pipeful into an ashtray and puffing down the stem like a horn player warming up his trumpet."
Although Fry gave up the pipe almost 20 years ago, he was active, knowledgeable, and dedicated to the pastime for 30 years of his life. Like us, he enjoyed and appreciated the benefits of the briar, and it isn't hard to imagine that he probably still misses it. Like so many other great talents, the pipe was important to his creativity, though he continues to excel and impress, even without the comforts of pipe smoking.
Bibliography
- Fry Stephen. The Fry Chronicles (2010)
- Fry, Stephen. "I Give Up" (2007), Stephenfry.com
- Fry, Stephen. "Stephen Fry," (2008) Tes magazine
- "Fry Honoured for Pipe Smoking" (Feb. 2003) BBC.co.uk.
- "Fry Lights Up Pipe-Smoking Award" (2003) Irish Examiner
- Gorlinski, Virginia. "Stephen Fry: Actor, Writer, Director," (2025), Britannica.com
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Comments
So why quit? Felt a need to jump onto the anti-smoking bandwagon?
U can't imagine that health, perhaps, might have been a concern?
Sure, I can imagine that, it’s a possibility. But it’s impossible to make judgements about any particular individual when there are so many factors to consider. All questions about health and smoking are based on studies for whole populations, not individuals. Worse yet, many studies have been poorly designed, or are even junk science, i.e. designed to get a result decided in advance. What can be stated with confidence, however, is that pipe smoking, generally—again, not referring to any one person—is way, way less of a health risk than cigarette smoking. That was mostly what I had in mind. The article also stated when Fry quit smoking, which was just when the antismoking mania was really taking off in the UK. Don’t get me wrong, I think Fry is a very talented man. I’ve often enjoyed his work.
U can't imagine that health, perhaps, might have been a concern?
Enjoyed every line in this article.
Another great read.
My grandad Alwayls said,never surrender what is worth keeping.
So nice to see an article about Stephen Fry. He is truly a bright and talented and humorous person, but an ex-pipe smoker. I 've seen interviews with him and he probably quit smoking the pipe because he was trying to free himself from everythimg associated with his generally addictive personality
A brilliant funny person and an enjoyable essay.
Loved this article. Funny how you can enjoy an entertainer for years and not know these fun little facts! Thanks!
I've always enjoyed Stephen Fry (and Alan Davies) in QI (Quite Interesting), a trivia and arcane knowledge show on the BBC and BBC Two. Available in the US on BBC America and BritBox.