'I never thought I was a heavy smoker - I didn’t think cancer would happen to me'

You’re tired or maybe frustrated, or just plain cross at someone and decide to light a cigarette. Even as you hear the sizzles of tobacco burning and that feeling at the back of your throat, you continue, despite knowing it's bad for you, and think the worst won’t happen to you. That’s exactly what Paul Heaven, 67, thought — until he got cancer.

Speaking from his hospital bed at the Morriston Hospital, with a scar running down his throat, the Townhill resident said: “I started when I was a pupil in Dynevor Grammar School , with my friends. Players No 6, mainly. They were the cheapest – less than 2 shillings a packet.

” Paul, who decided to share other in a bid to warn them of the consequences of smoking said: “Almost everyone smoked back then. All my peers and my friends. It was a normal thing.

My parents were smokers and lots of my uncles as well.” READ MORE: Smoking ban update as speech confirms exact date for illegal sales READ MORE: The place in Wales with the most smokers Paul is now recovering from a surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his throat. He explained that he had been a smoker for more than 50 years but did not classify himself as a ‘heavy smoker’.

He said : “I wouldn’t say I was a heavy smoker – it worked out around 15 a day. I was smoking rollies, a pack of 50g was lasting me 12 to 14 days. I knew it was bad for me but I didn’t think that it would happen to me.

Now I find out that one out of two people will, in their lifetim.