He was short, ginger-haired and ordinary looking, but good at boxing. When the young Allen tried to intervene, "he had his hands round my throat and there was murder in his eyes".Ĭarr, who described himself as "a typical street urchin" - he was sent to juvenile court for petty theft - unexpectedly passed his 11-plus exam, and found himself in the top stream at Wandsworth grammar school. One of Carr's early memories was of his father drunkenly threatening his mother. Carr described him as self-employed not out of choice, but because nobody would employ him he was moody and aggressive - "not so much a person as a zombie". His father, a self-employed builder, was also a boozer and gambler - and, of course, a chain-smoker. The second of four children, he grew up in a poor part of Putney, west London.
"Once they realise that cigarettes are the cause of their stress, and not its remedy," he would write, "they can no more believe in their need to smoke than they can kid themselves the Earth is flat."īefore inventing the Easyway, Carr's life was hard. He smoked up to 100 cigarettes a day, then quit in 1983, at the age of 48, using the method he would come to call "the Easyway" - and went on to become a multi-millionaire.Īccording to Carr, his method entails no willpower, but something much simpler - the realisation on the part of the smoker that nicotine addiction is a type of illusion or confidence trick.
Allen Carr, possibly the world's most successful anti-smoking guru, has died of lung cancer at his home in Spain, aged 72.