30 JULY 1965, Page 7

Pines

Ode day last week I dined with my wife and two friends at one of London's best restaurants. After dinner, I lit a cigar, the women smoked cigarettes and the man a pipe. Within seconds the head waiter arrived. No pipes. The ventilation sYstem, it was explained, without much convic- tion, could not cope with pipe smoke. There are, I suppose, two reasons for the ban. The first must be that pipes are non-U, which. I find odd. The smoke from a normal pipe is, I would have thought, less offensive than either cigar smoke or cigarette smoke. The second reason is, no doubt, that the restaurant hopes to sell cigars and cigarettes, but not pipe tobacco. That explains Perhaps why the ban is all but universal in the first-clasi restaurants.