Horticulturist beats the weed

If giving up smoking was your New Year's resolution and you're wavering already, brace yourself and think of Hudie Ni Dhomhnaill. Hudie was named yesterday as the "most inspiring smoker to kick the habit in 1997". But before the horticulturist and mother of six became an official inspiration for others, she had to seek some of it herself.

She found it in a hospital last Easter when visiting a friend with throat cancer. The friend's sister made her promise to quit cigarettes there and then, and the next day, Good Friday, she set out to a conquer a 50-a-day habit which stretched back 30 years.

It wasn't easy. But no self-respecting horticulturist could let a mere weed get the better of her. So, after nine months of effort - the first of them spent chewing nicotine-replacement gum - Hudie had her hour in the sun yesterday.

In fact, she won two weeks in the sun for winning the Nicorette Stop Smoking Achievement Award. The destination is Mexico and the sponsors had already given her a brochure describing some of the country's attractions: sun, sand and - this one isn't in the brochure - cheap cigarettes.

Not that Hudie, who is from Kilmashogue, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, is worried about temptation. She cites the fact that she and her husband Donal - another reformed smoker - are thinking about a new car to replace their 1984 banger: proof, she says, that the combined £60-a-week savings are now fixed in the household budget. "We wouldn't dream of it otherwise."

Donal quit the fags soon after her, although she had only asked him to change brands so the familiar smell wouldn't haunt her. He even thought about entering the competition in his own right but decided otherwise. In any case, he gets to go to Mexico anyway.

Another former smoker, singer Frances Black, presented the award and recalled her own decision to kick the habit back in 1991, a year after her father's death from lung cancer.