DURING more desperate moments at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, football and rugby fans have been heard cursing the smoking ban.

With extra-time and even penalties becoming a regular occurrence in football play-off finals or domestic cup finals, anxious supporters have been left gasping for a fag.

But, when the stadium was built, it was decided it would break the mould and impose a ban in all spectator areas.

Now the man behind the ban has gone public - it is Lord Faulkner of Worcester, a non-executive, unpaid public-interest director of the Millennium Stadium.

And he believes it's been a success, even if it has led to fans chewing their nails down to the knuckles on occasion.

Indeed, even the French - the world's most enthusiastic smokers - have played by the rules when visiting for the Rugby Six Nation's Championship.

Speaking in a House of Lords debate on a Bill which would ban smoking in public places in Wales, Lord Faulkner said: "I was told by opponents that it would not work because people would ignore it.

"That stewards would be abused if they tried to enforce it; and that, even if the locals were prepared to refrain from smoking, foreigners such as the French and the Germans, coming to support their countries' teams in the stadium would take no notice.

"None of that has happened. The smoking ban is to be strengthened, and it is enforced, not by officious stewards, but by the peer pressure of non-smoking fans who do not want themselves or their children to breath in other people's tobacco smoke."

The Bill cleared its first hurdle in the Lords and will now go to a Committee of Peers.

But it has little or no chance of becoming law, despite the Government's warning it wants restaurants and pubs across England and Wales to offer no smoking areas.

The main reason is that politicians cannot even get their own house in order, let alone the rest of the country.

All attempts to make Westminster a smoke-free workplace have, so far, failed.

As Lord Faulkner said: "I am appalled at how our refreshment department staff, who will never complain, are subjected to the smoke of Peers who puff away a few feet away from them in the Bishops' Bar."