| Ninewells Hospital’s site manager Brian Main has contacted the comedy star’s production company after he expressed an interest in helping to promote the smoking ban on the Dundee hospital site.
Last month, Mr Main said he was looking for alternative ways to highlight the smoking ban which was being regularly ignored, with smokers colonising the newly opened “fresh air” garden adjacent to the Ninewells main entrance.
A loudspeaker regularly announces polite requests to stub out cigarettes and Mr Main said one idea he had to catch people’s interest and hopefully get them to comply with requests, was to recruit a Chewin’ The Fat star to make the announcements.
Mr Kiernan is a smoker himself but has previously expressed his distaste for people hanging round outside hospitals in Glasgow having a cigarette and causing “an absolute fog of smoke”.
Mr Main said today he had been in email contact with Mr Kiernan’s production company Effingee Productions, set up with co-star Greg Hemphill. They had asked for some background and wanted to know the extent of the ban and what their involvement might be.
The site manager said he had just emailed back explaining the loudspeaker announcements were only on the Ninewells site and he was proposing to use the Gonnae No Dae That catchphrase if the production company gave their approval.
“I am just waiting to hear back from them,” said Mr Main.
“What I would like is to have a smoking message with Ford Kiernan doing the voice over and ‘Gonnae No Dae That’ booming through the loudspeakers. That would be tremendous but this is a work in progress and we are waiting to hear from them.
“If Ford Kiernan’s company are happy to help us, we will be happy to accept.”
In the meantime, he said there had been a bit of an improvement in compliance with the smoking ban, saying articles in the Tele had helped to highlight the fact people were being discouraged from smoking anywhere on the hospital site.
“We are getting a lot of positive comments from members of the public.” |
