Instead they look absurd and hopelessly, poignantly duped by Big Tobacco. It wasn't easy choosing one to feature, among all the tragi-comic ghosts of the nicotine-stained past, but eventually we decided on a winner: this preposterous mid-twentieth-century classic, of a pillar of the medical establishment complete with his black bag, attendant nurse - and lit cigarette: More doctors smoke Camels
More doctors smoke Camels
Images of cigarettes can apparently be very triggering for someone addicted to smoking; but images from vintage tobacco ads surely have the opposite effect. No-one, not even the King of Cool himself, Steve McQueen (who endorsed cigarettes in several ads, and died at the age of 50), looks even remotely cool to us now.