Thursday, July 23, 2015

the return of FAGS by SPIROS

hello there

for those of you who are for some reason interested in the specifics of the title of this particular blog post, look you see, do feel free to click on the pretty colours here and see the first, second and indeed third original editions of this infrequent yet weirdly regular topic. i would suggest, however, that you read this post all the way through before making any commitment to click, because it's not like the other posts are going to be all that different.

Spiros in general is a gent who, as regular readers will not need telling, tends to get quite excitable from time to time. a thing which excites him a very great deal indeed is finding what he considers to be peculiar, unusual and different cigarettes, which he forwards on for me to try. this, i am pretty sure you have guessed, is something that has happened once more fairly recently.



if you think you are looking at a packet of 10 Richmond Superkings, that's because, ladies and gentlemen, you are indeed looking at such, unless for some reason you have become fixated on the franked stamp also visible in the picture.

had i previously smoked Richmond cigarettes before? no. as you can see right there, the price for 10 of them is £4.14. that's quite expensive for my blood, thank you. i will stick with the cheaper ones, be it Winston when i am lucky enough to find them, or the random ways of Carlton when i am not quite so lucky. 

i had no idea what to expect when i got them, to be honest. Spiros for some reason had gotten it into his head that Richmond cigarettes were intended for a considerably more homosexual market than most fags, so i anticipated that they would either be menthol, or rather light in dangerous chemical and compound content.

as it turns out, as i think you can see here, they compare very favourably indeed to my preference these days, Winston. and yes, oh how i would love to be able to afford Marlboro at all, never mind a frequent basis.

if tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide are any sort of guide as to how strong a cigarette is, and as a consequence how class they are, then as you can see by 0.1mg of something or other the Richmond are marginally superior to Winston. or, if you want to look at it from another perspective, they are marginally worse for you, i guess. 

with this being the fourth edition of fags by Spiros, i should perhaps have called this one Citizens On Patrol, should i not? that's the one most fondly remembered for being - to date, and never say never - the final appearance by Steve Guttenberg in a Police Academy film. to say that they all went south after his departure from the series is both and understatement and really saying something.

lacking - some might well say severely so - with Richmond is, it seems, the glamorous sense of guaranteed danger when compared to Winston.

as you can see, Winston hold the promise of certain death. Richmond, meanwhile, only offer to "seriously harm" you and people near you. 

i suppose, if it were a choice between just these two alone, which one you would select is all down to what you want to achieve with them. if you're ok with the idea of just seriously harming a few people then Richmond is the way to go. if, however, you are intent on death, then the Winston it is.

at this stage, then, i suppose i should point out that smoking is a very, very silly thing to do. it's not widely accepted or smiled upon despite being legal. as point of fact, there are many hundreds of illegal activities that people engage in which are considered far more socially acceptable than smoking, going on the stares i get, the tut tut motions, and the put on coughs certain twats affect when they see me, usually on the other side of the road from them, smoking. so please do not read this blog as some sort of endorsement or promotion of cigarettes; rather just a review sort of thing. besides, as i have said before, if you are looking at me as some sort of role model or guide for life, you have major problems and smoking is but a slight one of them.


proof, as they say, is in the pudding. and, indeed in this case, in some nice quality Commodore 64 mode with scan lines on pictures.

how are they? very pleasant, actually. as in, if a packet of 19 0r 20 of them were south of £7 a pop i would possibly smoke them on a relatively frequent basis, against all my efforts of quitting / cutting down considerably. i mean, look, they are not Marlboro, but what they are is pretty decent.

i did, however, get a distinct sense of unease as i enjoyed these ten. not out of concern of harming others around me, seriously or otherwise, but because my thoughts were drawn to the intended market for Richmond.

to my mind, Richmond cigarettes are a brand which was intended to be purchased and used, or if you like smoked, in London alone. specifically, i think that Richmond superkings were intended only for senior members of the constabulary. i could imagine the boss, or gaffer, sitting by the holding cells of a police station in the 1970s, happily smoking them as the PCs and so forth under his charge merrily set about beating a confession for some crime or other out of the first gypsy, homosexual or black person they happened to find walking anywhere near the scene of the crime.  it's not a pleasant image, and it doesn't sound at all like a pleasant time, in particular if you happened to be a black homosexual gypsy. however, times change, and it would be quite wrong to insist on holding their use then against the makers of Richmond now.

Spiros, for the record, went to great lengths to get me these Richmond to try. he could not find them in a shop naturally, and so instead requested that his preferred proprietor of choice get some in stock. the proprietor agreed, on the condition that Spiros agreed to purchase all the stock he got should they not sell well amongst his other patrons.

there is every chance, then, that i will be getting further Richmond in the post off of Spiros. unless i go down to London again and collect them, which is actually possible, for i am presently bereft of Fortnum & Mason fancy marmalade.

at this point it might be worth pointing out that if you want to get something in the post off of Spiros, then as far as i know the win with Spiros contest is still on the go. Spiros has even set up one of them fancy chrome book computers to handle the avalanche of emails he anticipated in getting from his many fans who wanted something from him. so far, however, to my knowledge he has only had mails offering him cock pills, as well as a few helpful hints from google by google telling him how to best use google to do google things.

and, well, that's that. if you were for some reason wondering if Richmond superkings were worth trying and you are a smoker anyway, then my view is that they are pretty decent.

hope this has been of help!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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