Isle castaway who won't be sending any smoke signals

Published on Friday 29 May 2009 22:24

TO QUIT smoking, Geoff Spice needs a larger patch than others. While his fellow puffers make do with a packet of Nicorette, the retired banker has settled on a 40-acre patch of land on a deserted Scottish island to help him break his addiction.

For 30 days and 30 nights Mr Spice will be marooned on the tiny island of Sgarabhaigh in the Sound of Harris, where he will detox on a diet of audiobooks and distract himself from nicotine cravings by getting to grips with his guitar.

He will be searched for cigarettes before he departs, and as the island is uninhabited Mr Spice believes the isolated spot in the Outer Hebrides offers the best chance of quitting a habit that has plagued him for 43 years.

Mr Spice , first thought of abandoning himself on a deserted island a decade ago while living in Australia, but was fearful of encountering poisonous snakes. When he decided to resurrect the idea in Britain he identified the island by searching for "uninhabited Scottish islands" on the internet.

Mr Spice said yesterday: "I don't plan to take any aids, like patches, with me, I will just be in a position where I cannot get cigarettes no matter how much I want one, and that, of course, is the whole point of going there."

Sgarabhaigh, which is Gaelic for cormorant island, has no electricity or water supply, so he will rely for fires from driftwood and a camp stove and bottled water. To fight off boredom, he will take a guitar – which he hopes to learn to play – an iPod with 120 books on it, a mobile phone and a computer, both powered by a solar cell.

Mr Spice, who worked in banking for 30 years before retiring in 2004 as a global head of treasury, said he began smoking at the age of 13 when he stole a packet of cigarettes with the idea of selling them at school, but smoked them instead.

He said: "I am now 56 and have been hooked ever since, and currently smoke about 30 per day."

He added: "I have tried to quit before, using patches, nicotine gum and cold turkey. About a year ago I read a quit-smoking book by Alan Carr, after which I stopped smoking for nine days, but found that it became more difficult, rather than easier, as time went by. I could think of nothing else but cigarettes, and finally I bought some."

He said: "I don't think it will be too difficult to spend a month on the island. I will miss my wife, Elena, my children and my family, but my mobile phone will work, so we can speak. I'm hoping my month on the island may lead to many years of extra life that I'll spend with them."