FOR Joanna Lumley, famous for her role as a chain-smoking fashion editor, the rules are Absolutely Fatuous.

Today is the last gasp for actors in Scotland smoking on screen in a ban that will soon stub out the cigarettes of Britain’s television characters.

The Scottish authorities have brushed off pleas by Lumley, who played Patsy in the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous, and other opponents of the measure to lighten up.

From today, actors north of the border will be banned from filming scenes with cigarettes, cigars or pipes. Even a request to permit herbal cigarettes has been rejected.

ITV, which films the Rebus detective series, based on the Ian Rankin books, is now amending the scripts for the next three dramas, which will be filmed shortly.

The scriptwriters have opted to turn the ban to their dramatic advantage. Rebus falls foul of the law when he attempts to light up in his favourite watering hole, the Oxford Bar in Edinburgh. He may emerge as Scotland’s smoking ban martyr.

“He’s always smoked so it’s difficult to imagine him going to the Oxford or having a drink at home without lighting up,” said Rankin.

Forest, the organisation that lobbies on behalf of the tobacco companies, was even more damning. “Thanks to the Scottish executive, Scotland’s most famous cop could be committing a crime rather than solving one,” said Simon Clark, director of Forest. The ban will also affect Taggart, the long-running ITV police drama.

The ban has led one of Scotland’s leading dramatists, John Byrne, best known for Tutti Frutti, to think about emigrating. “I despair of our politicians,” said Byrne. “It’s the last straw and I’m seriously considering leaving Scotland.”

The ban in Scotland, which follows similar curbs introduced in Ireland in 2004, is to be followed by legislation for England next year, which could have the same consequences for actors on stage or screen.

“It’s a rubbish idea,” said Sir John Mortimer, the playwright, who points out that Rumpole, the barrister, “can’t think without smoking”. A new Rumpole book comes out this autumn and there are plans to film some more of the earlier books.

The ban in Scotland will have the unintended consequence of censoring the act of smoking at home from the screen — while it remains legal in reality. Any film set, whether representing a public place or the home, is deemed to be a workplace and is therefore subject to the curbs.

The ban will have the most drastic effect on revivals of plays or screen costume dramas, notably from the 1920s to the 1960s when smoking was far more common. New dramas will have to portray Sir Winston Churchill without his cigars.

Sir Peter Hall, the theatrical director, said: “I do smell political correctness in all this from the government, which itself is a kind of censorship. I can see some argument for not smoking on stage, though I’m not necessarily convinced of the arguments about passive smoking.”

Hall is producing a 50th anniversary production of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Theatre Royal Bath in August. The lead character, Jimmy Porter, is a heavy pipe smoker. The actor will be allowed to smoke on stage at Bath this year, but is likely to be blocked from doing so next year.

Equity, the actors’ union, and the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) are lobbying against the “daft” ban to urge a rethink in Whitehall.

“It would be nonsense to have a complete ban,” said Richard Pulford, director of SOLT. “We hope we can persuade the government to see sense with herbals at the least.”

Christine Payne, Equity’s general secretary, wrote to Caroline Flint, a health minister, about the issue last week. The Department of Health insists it is still considering the question.

British TV has spawned a number of hard-living characters who might struggle to cope without their cigarettes. They include Fitz, played by Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, and Jane Tennison, played by Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.

Period pieces such as Life on Mars, the BBC hit set in the 1970s, bring home to viewers the change in culture that has taken place ahead of the ban. It is to be recommissioned, so may fall foul of a smoking ban in England next year.

During the golden age of Hollywood, smoking played a part in some of cinema’s most romantic scenes — such as Bette Davis receiving a cigarette from Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager or Humphrey Bogart smoking in Casablanca.

In George Clooney’s 2005 movie about McCarthyite America, Good Night, and Good Luck, Ed Murrow, the CBS anchor, is rarely seen without his cigarette even while presenting his news programme.

Smoking in public places and the workplace is banned in California, but film and TV companies have obtained “industrial exemptions” to depict characters who smoke. In theatres on the west and east coasts, however, warnings must be put up in the foyer if an actor is to smoke on stage.

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