My favourite story of the day!
The most inventive tactic of the lot is being employed in Minnesota, USA to beat the smoking ban.
More than 100 bars across the state have started holding "theatre nights" in which patrons are encouraged to dress up in period costume and project their voices, playbills are pinned on the walls, and bar paraphernalia makes up the props.
The bars are seeking to bypass a smoking ban introduced last October by exploiting a loophole that allows cigarettes to be puffed in theatrical productions.
What began as an idea by a Minnesota lawyer, Mark Benjamin, to get round what he saw as an unjustified prohibition has snowballed into a state-wide protest. Bars have taken to calling their theatre nights "Before the Ban", which allows them to claim that their customers are in character playing themselves before the October injunction came down.
One bar in the north of the state calls its night The Tobacco Monologues. Black cloth is draped over entrances, with notices saying "Stage Entrance". And ashtrays are piled up under the label "Props". Other bars hand out badges to anyone who donates a dollar saying "Act Now!"
This is a fab idea, and one I hope will catch on here - "Camera, lights, action!"
Read the full article by Ed Pilkington in the Guardian
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