Four weeks without a cigarette. Four weeks. That's almost a month.

I have been using the Niquitin QC Clear Step 2 patches since Friday morning. Up until then I had been receiving a 21mg dose of nicotine over a 24 hour period. This is now reduced by one third to 14mg over a 24 hour period. Step 3 reduces it further to 7mg.

I assumed this involved the young boffins down at the Patch Factory making a weaker potion.

I was wrong. The patches are simply smaller. By one third. (The retail price is the same.) Just as well I didn't get 18 hour patches, that presumably are even smaller, as things could get silly by the time I reach Step 3.

Can you imagine a cigarette company pulling the same trick though? “Same taste but a third less nicotine” and you find when you open the packet that they're tiddly little things? For the same price?

Though I have my doubts about the production methods used there could be good times ahead for the Patch Factory down in Brentford. If the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is correct and the pub ban will lead to a “Mass Quit” then there's going to be a big surge in prosperity down there.

And then, eight weeks later when everyone's finished their treatment, there's going to be mass redundancies.

Not one for the amateur investor.