THE first pub landlord in Oxfordshire to be fined for flouting the smoking ban has finally caved in and provided an outdoor smoking area for customers.

Flamboyant publican and restaurateur Gerry Stonhill, who runs the Mason Arms in South Leigh, was fined £5,750 last April for breaching the ban.

After the court case last year Mr Stonhill said former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who left office in June 2007, could “stick his anti-smoking law up his a***.”

However, tired of seeing his customers standing outside his door, Mr Stonhill decided to build a smoking station with a bit of a difference.

He said: “I’ve taken an old tree trunk and a propeller that I bought in Essen in Germany that apparently came from a small torpedo and screwed it into the trunk. I haven’t done it because my customers were asking for it.

“I was just tired of people standing outside my door looking like frightened rabbits.

“Now they have got somewhere to stand around and have a drink and damned good smoke.”

Mr Stonhill — the self-proclaimed Duke of South Leigh — has also put up a special brass plaque to mark the occasion of the smoking area’s opening.

It reads: “Smoking station opened by HRH the Duke of the Principality of South Leigh.”

The landlord, who admitted all the charges at Witney Magistrates’ Court last year, was given three separate fines of £500 for failing to prevent smoking in a smoke-free area, along with fines of £200 and £50 for not displaying the correct signs. He was also ordered to pay costs of £4,000.

“It was nothing much to a rich man,” joked Mr Stonhill.

“I paid that out of a bag of loose change that I had lying about.”

Mr Stonhill was also fined after he admitted lighting up a cigar in a smoke-free area.

“I still smoke cigars,” he said. “But obviously I go out to our new area now to smoke them and there is no smoking in the pub any more.

“I still think the smoking ban is absolutely ridiculous. It hasn’t affected me as much, because I’m more of a restaurant, but it has killed off a lot of village pubs.

“People who have been working hard all day on the farms should be allowed to come and have a drink and a few cigarettes in the evening — they deserve it.”