JUST over 500 years ago, Christopher Colombus, after getting his first view of what he thought was Japan, sent a team of men into the interior of the island to investigate it. They returned with the news that the inhabitants took their pleasure from "drinking smoke".

Since then, the fortunes of Cuba have waxed and waned but the fame of the Havana cigar has remained constant and is even now, according to the tobacco industry, enjoying an increase in popularity.

There was nothing new about the smoking of a weed, of course. The recently rediscovered Herodotus wrote about the inhabitants of the Black Sea inhaling herbal smoke in the fifth century BC. The Arab world knew all about the high jinks to be had from hash long before the rest of us did and in medieval times, a puff of coltsfoot or even dried cow dung was the recommended remedy for "windy griefs of the breast". What sets the Havana substance apart from others is that it is, made from a leaf indigenous to the Caribbean region: tobacco, the plant which contains the addictive narcotic nicotine.

For a long time considered a symbol of wealth and power - remember Uncle Sam with his huge stogie? - the cigar also served as a smoke screen between the sexes: those women who smoked them, did so mostly in private. George Sand was an exception in this but then she was in most things.

Now, it seems, there is an increase in cigar smoking throughout the western world, with Ireland being no, exception. This is due partly to the idea that you're less likely to get cancer if you smoke one big cigar rather than 10 small cigarettes. Lighting up the big one is also considered a fashionably faddy thing to do both for men and women what, with this and that personality doing it at the flash of a bulb. Wannabe a Spice Girl? Get a really chunky one between your teeth now. Finally - and most ironically - along with the change in the image of the traditional cigar smoker comes a necessary parallel growth of exclusive bonding: the cigar clubs, cigar bars, cigar sampling evenings and, yes, in London last month, the first ladies cigar tasting lunch.

"The cigar is a very powerful symbol," says Mark Stucklin of Hanla & Frankau, sole importers of Havana cigars into the UK, "and the Havana cigar the most potent of all probably because of the special blend of climate, soil, rain fall and centuries of expertise." Not to mention Graham Greene and Fidel Castro.

Choosing a cigar is all a matter of taste but the three things to watch out for are the filler, the binder and the wrapper. The filler is the bit you're going to smoke - that collection of accordion pleated leaves picked for, among others, their flavour and for their capacity to burn slowly. The binder leaf holds the whole structure together and the wrapper - usually the most prized and expensive of cigar tobacco - is like an oily, pliable bandage around the whole thing.

What thickness and length you go for will depend on what you're doing and how much time you've got. A five inch Panatella with a ring gauge of 30 won't take all evening to smoke whereas the Montecristo A, a nine and a half inch Havana with a ring gauge of 47, could well take you through to bed time. You should never need to quench a cigar, by the way, for the sign of a good one is that left to itself it burns away quietly, the ash retaining the cigar's original shape. And in case you ever need to roll your own - a skill that takes years of practice - the ring gauge refers to a standard cigar measurement. One ring gauge equals one sixty fourth of an inch so that a 33 ring gauge cigar would be half an inch thick. The theory is that the thicker the cigar, the cooler the smoke.

Knowing how to light up is crucial to the image: snip the top off the cigar with a guillotine cutter which must be sharp enough to ensure it won't tear the wrapper. First, rotate the top of the cigar over a lighter flame to warm it, then light it, rolling it evenly in your mouth as you do. After that, you're on your own. And with the smell some cigars make, you probably will be.

Keeping cigars needs care and attention as well. They shouldn't be left to dry out, so a tube lined with a thin layer of cedar will ensure individual cigars are maintained in prime condition. A humidor will keep cigars in good condition indefinitely and indeed a year ago a cache of 150 year old Havana cigars was discovered in Temple House, Co Sligo, in prime condition, having been stored in the cellar close to a lake which meant the humidity was just right.

If talk of humidors and guillotines and cedar lined container tubes is confusing, then a visit to Dublin's Kapp and Peterson, in Grafton Street, will explain all. Set up over 100 years ago by the Kapp brothers from Nuremburg and Charles Peterson from Riga, this tobacco emporium has everything for the cigar smoker plus all the gear to go with the cult including cufflinks to match your chosen brand, leather cigar cases and embroidered dress slippers.

THERE'S just one thing missing in all this, of course; the health warning. So here it is, straight from the side of the mouth: if you're thinking of switching from cigarette to cigar smoking because you think it would be better for your health, think again, says Dr Luke Clancy, consultant chest physician.

"It's a very bad changeover. There's more leaf in cigars so the smoker gets huge doses of carbon monoxide and that's what leads to heart trouble. And if people start smoking cigars, they'll go on to cigarettes because if you can tolerate cigars, cigarettes are no problem. I'm not talking, of course, about the odd, celebratory cigar. But really, a cigar is a surrogate cigarette."

This doesn't fit in with the cigar industry's image of the average smoker, who, it says, rarely smokes more than four or five cigars a week, if that. Mind you, with premium cigars costing anything from £4.50 to £25 each, you're not going to be smoking them like they were cigarettes. But then, as Dr Clancy, predicts, you might switch to cigarettes; because they're cheaper.

Agreeing with this point of view is Norma Cronin, the Stop smoking counsellor at the Irish Cancer Research Association. "In the past," she says, "cigar smokers tended not to inhale but now, if they switch from cigarette to cigar smoking, they'll probably inhale cigar smoke which is as bad. In any case, switching to cigar smoking merely reinforces the whole behaviour."