I salute three genuinely brave people - Douglas Carswell MP and two dedicated smokers who've just quit

I'll start with the two who have recently quit cigarettes. One of them is a close relative, the other a friend since schooldays. They are undoubtedly the two most committed smokers I have ever known - in comparison with them, my 30+ years forty-a-day habit was a distinctly lukewarm, amateurish affair: indeed, so laodicean was my attitude that I spent my last 15 years as a smoker on Silk Cut, having eschewed Benson & Hedges. I'm sure if either of these chaps had been handed a packet of low-tar cigarettes, they'd have crushed it in one hand and thrown it aside, laughing contemptuously as they did so.

I feel relatively safe in mentioning their triumphant overcoming of addiction now because the first has just clocked up 69 non-smoking days, and the other isn't far behind. It's generally reckoned that it takes 21 days to break a habit - but all of us ex-puffers know that smoking is a distinctly more addictive activity than, say, drinking coffee or eating peanut butter (both of which I gave up years ago). Smoking defines your day from the moment you wake up till you drop off to sleep in a way that munching peanut-butter sandwiches just doesn't.

One of this pair of heroes has managed it using nothing more than patches and gum (I added Chupa-Chups lollipops - not necessarily recommended, given that I immediately broke two teeth as a result). The other is using e-cigarettes, which the sour-faced leftist puritan health-Nazis of the World Health Organisation now want banned in workplaces and restaurants. It doesn't really matter what you use (as long as it isn't even more harmful than cigarette tar) - giving up smoking cigarettes after four (in one case five) decades is a tremedous achievement. Venceremos, amigos! 

As for Douglas Carswell, who this morning quit as Tory MP for Clacton in order to join UKIP - well, what an honourbale, brave, principled man. I'll admit to being a fan (there's a permanent link to his blog in the Blogfeeds section on this page). I'm particularly impressed by his decision not simply to switch horses mid-stream and wait until next year's general election before giving Clacton's voters a say, but to resign as an MP and force a by-election. If he had clung on to his seat - even for nine months - it would have made his calls for genuine democracy seem pretty hollow. Now, no one can accuse him of opportunism. I'm one of those former Conservative supporters who has begun to have doubts about supporting UKIP next year, because the thought of that dreadful little twit Ed Miliband as Prime Minister makes me shudder. But I - and, I suspect, tens of thousands of others traditional Tory voters, many in key marginals - will be enjoying the thought of David Cameron and his modernising cronies breaking out into a cold sweat at the news of Carswell's heroic defection.

I notice that the Telegraph has barred comments on Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's latest blog, published this morning. This could be because his subject is the revelation that multiculturalism caused the sexual abuse of 1400 mainly white children in Rotheram at the hands of sexually predatory gangs comprised mostly of Pakistani Muslims. Or it might be an attempt to fend of the hundreds of readers who would very much like to know what exactly is stopping Hannan from following the example of his brave chum, Carswell. Go on, Dan - you know you want to.