Actor playing Churchill in London can't smoke cigar on stage, officials warn

Established history bowed to current correctness at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival yesterday when Mel Smith, an actor portraying Winston Churchill, drew back from his threat to light a Havana cigar onstage in defiance of a new Scottish antismoking law, the BBC reported. The Edinburgh City Council had warned it would shut the theater if the law was broken. William Burdett-Coutts, the artistic director of the theater, said he had been told he would lose his Fringe license permanently and be fined about $1,900 if Mr. Smith smoked during his performance in “Allegiance,” about a 1921 visit to London by the Irish leader Michael Collins. But Mr. Burdett-Coutts said he thought it was “stupid when smoking is an integral part of a show to enforce this law.” He added, “I am all for a smoking ban in bars, but not to have an actor smoking while he represents a character in history who did smoke is absurd.”