HOW would you feel if I lit a bonfire by your table as you ate in a restaurant and then turned away oblivious as the fumes wafted over your food, making you cough and sneeze?

You'd go barmy, of course and accuse me of endangering your health and of ruining your meal.

But that's exactly what happens to me every time I eat out and have the misfortune to sit next to smokers.

It happened again to me in High Wycombe at the weekend as the table next to me chain smoked for about half an hour after finishing their dinner.

As usual, the smoke made me cough and splutter, and left a foul smell over my hair and clothes.

And no, I wasn't being a Victor Meldrew: I didn't even realise they were smoking until I began to cough.

The pro-smoking lobby will tell you this is all about people's freedom to do what they want in an adult society.

But what about my freedom to enjoy clean air? And, if smokers enjoy the habit so much, why do they always hold the cigarettes away from their own faces?

In fact, they invariably seem to courteously hold the fags away from their friends and point them in the opposite direction where I am sitting.

I'm normally too polite to say anything and suffer in silence (apart from the coughs and a few whinges to Mrs Editor's Chair).

If the smokers realise they are causing a problem, they never do anything about it.

Their rights and selfish enjoyment are much too precious to sacrifice for the sake of someone else's health and comfort.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't object to them killing themselves if they wish to smoke in their own homes (as long as it's not in the faces of their children, which is still a common sight these days).

The days of smoking in public places have got to end.

We have tolerated their selfish deathwish for too long, and I don't see why we non-smokers have to have this inflicted on us any longer.

How about a ban on smoking in every single public place in the land?