Ahem. The counsel for the defence says: I would have loved to be sitting close enough to the ashtray in order to use it. Or indeed to have been sitting at all in a very crowded pub on a Saturday night in the centre of town. It is far more antisocial to lean across people deeply engaged in conversation, waving a still-burning fag stub mere inches from their faces, in order to put it out than it is to put it out on the pub carpet which is clearly a special type of carpet designed to withstand the onslaught of fag butts / beer stains / mud from working men’s hobnailed boots / unidentifiable marks. It is also far more antisocial to insist on putting assorted detritus from your pockets / pub snacking into the ashtray which 99.9% of non smokers insist on doing. OI! It’s an ASHtray, not a crisp packet tray or a bus ticket tray. If I had been able to get near the flipping thing no doubt it would have been overflowing with pork scratching packets. Grumble grumble woe is me…