I don't blame the half of a cinema that allowed you to smoke while watching Weekend at Bernie's or Kentucky Fried Movie, the newsagent who sold single fags - and our local one was called Fags and Mags -or the fact my gran ran a pub which had a 'smoke room' and my other gran smoked 80 a day until she was 80.
I don't blame the the giant billboards for Marlboro outside schools or those clever Benson and Hedges ads set in a swimming pool in the middle of the desert which none of us understood.
And I don't blame the Formula One cars and their drivers adorned with the very cool JPS livery, those attractive thin packets of Dunhill or the packets of Gauloise you could buy for 50p each on a school trip to France.
I don't blame bank managers and job interviewers offering you a cigarette from a box on the table, the bike sheds at school, the Skilton sisters, journalism college, or John Thaw in The Sweeney.
No, I blame Ross Shine's barmitzvah.
That's where I had my first cigarette, 35 years ago.
Like all such events including weddings and funerals and anniversaries, the tables would have a menu, flowers in the middle, a book of matches with the date and occasion printed on them and a round container full of free cigarettes - John Player black tubes of them on this occasion, if I remember rightly.
A group of us on a table at Ross's barmitzvah grabbed a handful and made our way outside - not because you couldn't smoke indoors in those days but because we were 13 and didn't want the grown ups to see us.
We went outside and we all lit up. Andrew Mendelson was sick, Ross gagged and chucked his away, a couple of others watched but didn't have a puff and me? I smoked a whole one and carried on smoking for the next three decades with a few gaps in between as I tried to give up.
It wasn't immediate. I didn't go out the next day and find someone to buy me a packet of Woodbines. It was a few weeks later that I found myself on the way home from school on the top deck of the 129 bus where Martin Warner offered me a cigarette.
A few days after that it was, I think, Kevin Rose who gave me a fag as we waited at the bus stop outside school.
And that was it.
Now I'm a sort of non-smoker. I'll have the occasional one when offered and perhaps two or three if I'm with smokers and there is alcohol around but generally I refrain.
It is said that if you ask a smoker to go back to when they had their first cigarette and say yes or no, knowing what was to happen, all smokers would refuse that very first one.
And let's face it, we probably would. As well as telling our kids not to do what we did. But today, on non-smoking day, there is still a side of me that hates the preaching, holier-than-thou hordes of anti-libertarian do gooders who come out of the woodwork every time they hear the latest government wheeze (and the pun is intended).
All these antis seem grumpy and puritanical and wound up. They need to relax and chill out. Perhaps they need to unwind with the cool, refreshing taste you only get in Camel's unique blend of finest Virginia tobacco. I find you can't beat a good, rough, shag.
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Incidentally, Ross Shine works in Preston these days which is where I was on Monday. That's twice I've been up north in a week and, you know what, both times the sun shone, the trains ran on time, and I didn't get mugged by anyone in a flat cap and walking a whippet.
I even find I have a loyal band of blog readers in Newton-le-Willows. Wherever that is!
Much more of this and I'll have to chuck away my book of regional stereotypes. At least until the in laws come round again.
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After the Barca-Arsenal game, Sky 'expert' Jamie Redknapp said 'Arsenal were literally passed to death.'
What a way to die.
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According to a story in the papers - okay, we wrote it but I'm sure it's true - parental happiness disappears when you have a fourth child. I have three. Which is why I'm in such a great mood, all the bloody time.
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