Smoke rebel host bids to be UKIP MP

Smoke ban rebel licensee Nick Hogan is to run as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate for Chorley in the next election.

His appointment was announced at a public meeting held by the party at the Swan With Two Necks pub in Chorley.

"I am very pleased to be asked to become the parliamentary candidate," said Hogan.

"The EU affects our daily life in every way and I am fed up to the back teeth with the rules coming down from the European Union. We have had enough and must say 'no' to being dictated to."

He said the smoking ban was "the final straw".

"At the end of the day we are British and proud to be British and do not want to be run by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels," said Hogan, whose wife Denise is licensee of the Swan with Two Necks.

Paul Nuttall, UKIP chairman, who said Hogan would be "an asset to the party and would work hard to help further its aims of withdrawing from the EU".

Hogan is currently continuing his fight against his recent conviction for of failing to prevent people from smoking on his former licensed premises, the Swan Hotel and Barristers in Bolton on four occasions in July last year.

A district judge has refused his appeal but "on a point of principal" he is now preparing to take the matter to the Court of Appeal.

UKIP advocates lifting the smoking ban in pubs and giving licensees the right to choice whether to allow smoking in all or part of their premises,