Author Archives: Rob Ellard

It isn’t easy, we empathise. It’s a hazard-strewn trail from waking to downing the last bottle of Baileys – and that’s not even factoring in the non-stop begging adverts coming from the television. That said, we believe in helping people who really, genuinely need assistance. And do you know who those people are? It’s you, that’s who.

Each year people give you a collection of things that will either serve no function in your life, or offend you to the very core of your being if you gaze upon them. “Easy”, some say, “I’ll just pop them on eBay, lob them at the tip or palm them off to other people next year.”

A simple solution could be a trip to the tip experience. This is an experience unlike any of the decent ones you might have received during Yuletidemas. A trip to the tip currently (at a time when bin people reckon all of your extra festive rubbish will magically be sorted out by David Blane) is like an adventure into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There’s queues, a bearded man in a hat shouting at you, more queues, and the macho posturing as each person attempts to lob their stuff to the end of a skip and only manages to get it just over the wall. And queues. Trust us, it’s hell.

So, eBay then? While this might seem to be a simple solution to a simple problem we need to caution you that nothing in life is simple – just look at people standing in a fast food restaurant queue. Over the last twenty years there has been no revolution in the fast food menu. The few burgers listed on it are the same as they’ve always been: burger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, fat burger, fat burger with cheese, tall burger, fish burger (“that will be five minutes, sir, we’ll bring it to you in half an hour”) and chuck burger.

It all seems so simple but you can guarantee you’ll spend a frustrating time standing behind people who have no idea what they want – every single bloomin’ time. Gifts are the same.

You are not the only person using eBay. The person who gave you that present uses it too. And they are going to see your selfishness displayed in your advert. And, if not, they will find out from Uncle Bob that you palmed stuff off on him because they’ll see his advert next year. It just makes you a horrible person attempting to profit from your selfishness. No, we say, don’t be that person – let us profit from your selfishness and we’ll be the horrible person for you. Yes, this is where we come in, with Stealthvape’s unwanted gift service.

So, here’s you sat in front of a litre of juice that won’t be used. It’s because your family haven’t bothered to note your long-standing hatred of all things mango. Even the name irks you. They should know that but they couldn’t be bothered. Scientists could take bananas and fuse them with grapes…but if they called the frankenfruit “the new mango” it would guarantee you’d jump off a pier.

And that mod? Didn’t they appreciate you’ve already got one of those and wanted the one with a screen you could personalise? The sods. But if you get caught getting shot of it you know it will all be you that’s at fault.

What does our service offer? All you need to do is package the unwanted items, write our address on the label and pay for postage – we take care of everything else and guarantee that you’ll never be troubled by the stuff again. The only thing we ask is that you don’t use the service for getting shot of tat, just nice stuff. Preferably expensive. Thank you.

Stealthvape’s new Ladybits eliquid featured in an early January tale about anger and a vaper’s inability to be social on social media. It was part of a range we thought the world was shouting out for, because some bedroom brewers don’t seem to be able to care how vaping is perceived. Obviously, we never sold any Stealthvape Junior Juice eliquids to underage vapers. We gave it away at baby showers. Or did we? (We didn’t). Or didn’t we?

We formed the The National Union of Apathetic Vapers in February. Well, we would have done but there was little interest and we couldn’t be bothered. Which automatically made us all life members. It couldn’t last. As the inevitability of the impending TPD rose up, we cast our collective hive mind to hope and future-proofed vaping. Given the rise of Trump the ideas all seem a bit prescient now.

As the month wore on, we warned vapers about the unexplained dangers of vaping. One minute you’re happily engrossed in coil winding, the next you are arriving at casualty clutching scorched thighs. It’s a simple step from patiently working to in-patient, which is why we then explored E-cig Ban. We spoke to Professor Simon Cashback and Timothy Frothingatthemouth when nobody else would. We spoke to Martin McPies when nobody else wanted to.

It was a natural progression to explore vaping on the go. So we did. Not for the first time, we thought the unthinkable to provide the solutions other lesser folk would consider unworkable.

It’s the knack we have for getting under the skin of the previously unconsidered that stands us in front of others in the queue for life’s bathroom. It’s a product of travelling the B-roads of the mind that convinced people to consult us with their problems in Auntie Stealthvape Replies. *On the advice of our lawyer, we would like to point out that we did not encourage Mr Foxy Knickers to do the thing he was sent down for.

This is the same person who gave us legal advise after we uncovered the secret choreographed script for the forthcoming Commons ecig debate. No matter what Mr Peter Xenophobe claims in the Evening Telegraph, the judge found in our favour (and we’re still waiting for 73 of the 2,000 rubber duckies we were awarded).

There may be no “I” in Team but there is “Vagina Temp“, “Mega Van Pit” and  “Anti Amp Veg” in Team Vaping. This is why we opened up The Stealthvape Corporate Fun Team-Building Activity Centre, on the edge of the delightful Thurrock Business Park.

Visionaries? Us? Of course, we absolutely agree with you – after all, who else would have created Stealthvapeonburyexpotacular? We knew that the vape scene was now very ‘scene’ with all the hiphopsters and beardymen. So we contracted the very best musical acts. People marveled at the giant sounds of Little David, Jerry Wallace playing every single one of his big hit and nobody played a mean polka quite like Whoopee John.

We created a movie about vaping, explored the social nuances of library vaping, and (in a ground breaking piece of investigative journalism) broke “The Truth about the Vape Industry“.

Barely a quarter of 2016 completed, we had accomplished so much. We created a much fairer system for online vape competitions. Unfortunately, despite being stunningly fair, it transpired that everyone entering wasn’t up to the task so no one won.

Then we invented a motivational program for people looking to quit – creating original products into the bargain. First up, The Stealthvape VapeMate Safe. It’s like a normal safe but six times better. Then, the revolutionary Stealthvape Vapemate Nonvapecig. It looks like a mod and atomiser, it has a colourful liquid in the tank, but press the button and nothing happens. People call us geniuses and we’d struggle to argue with them.

But then came the all-things-to-all-people Stealthvape Vaping Vapebox For Vapers â„¢. A product so stunning that people were lost for words – and when they found those words it was too late because we’d gone off for chips. Chips for days, like you find in the awesome tricky box.

We mourned Mark Drakeford’s passing in May, and gave Wales a whole bunch of ideas of things they could crack down on instead of vape. So popular was our idea that car indicators should be replaced with cuddly Charlotte Church dolls that it’s rumoured VTTV’s Dave Dorn has relocated to Swansea. He loves Charlotte Church that much.

A tale was told about a man’s valiant attempts to cut down to zero nic. We didn’t mention it, due to it occurring in real time, but it failed. Our hearts go out to John. Err, Dave. Umm, no, John.

As the year’s clock struck six, we gave you all a new solution to selling online AND a free-range range of vape products. Such a fun-packed six months that there are those who demand: “Where on earth do you get all of these ideas?” Simple, we steal them from the Dark Net, it’s got something like 19 times the ideas the normal internet has. That and we don’t go out much.

What’s the purpose of Stealthvape Tours and Travel, you are asking yourself. Quite simply, it offers exactly the same kind of tour and travel service that you could find from any other tour and travel company. Except it’s for vapers. To date you will have had to arrange your holiday by speaking to people who probably didn’t vape, and travel on buses, trains and planes that were operated by non-vapers.

Then, upon arriving at your destination, you would be greeted like Michael Gove at Boris Johnson’s birthday party. Or, just for balance, as welcome as Jeremy Corbyn at Tony Blair’s trip to Carpet Supacentre. “Vapoteur? Non, monsieur,” says the genial host at your vacation centre. “Mais non! C’est un place locale for the population locale.”

The world is splitting in two; there are places where vaping is positively welcomed and places where it is banned. We know those places. Well, we know some of them and we’ve constructed everything from short breaks to full blown tours to explore them.

Fancy an inner city vape break? Our five star tent beckons from a luxurious East Midlands roundabout, handy for Nottingham city centre shopping and all of the vape-friendly places it contains. Martin may look dishevelled, he would be given that we turfed him out of his tent, but he is a font of knowledge and is willing to act as your concierge for two bottles of super-strength cider and a fish supper.

But you want more, right? You fancy combining vaping with extreme thrills. In days gone by, adventure seekers would go to the places the Foreign Office advised against. Well now you can do it from a vape perspective with our round the world ‘Banned’ tour.

Landing in California, you will be breaking the law from the minute you take your first puff until the moment you’re running back to the airport. Hop from there to Australia, to Singapore and then through other Far Eastern countries where vaping is considered worse than murder. Before you know it you’ll have a collection of arrest photographs to be proud of and a story for every vape meet back home.

It’s not been easy setting up the range of activities Stealthvape Tours and Travel can now offer, and they aren’t cheap either – but then nothing worthwhile is. Just make sure you don’t leave it too late, bookings are anticipated to come in thick and fast as the drudgery of January blurs into a miserable February.

Seeing as we’re looking back at what was, it’s appropriate that we start with the time we looked even further back in time. All because some idiot thought the Fortuna SubOhm Tank would be a great idea. It remains as clever as Leicester selling Kanté, Samsung using that exploding battery or having held a belief that the Chilcot report would change anything.

Halfway through the year we believed that Brexit would or wouldn’t change vaping, and that the TPD (as it stands) will restrict smokers’ access to the truth about swapping to ecigs. How can we overcome this obstacle? “It’s us – we are the sexy advert. Everywhere we go, everything we do, we’ve got to exude the very essence of sexy. Now, for you and me it’s going to be pretty easy. We are sexy beasts.”

Consequently, maybe it’s time to preserve the present, we thought to ourselfves. Maybe it’s time to get busy with the Stealthvape Vape Pot™. It was the moment when industry experts sat up and nodded in unison, they understood why we hold a sterling reputation for delivering ground-breaking products and inventing new segments of the market.

We stood should to shoulder with the poor women and men who’ve spent every penny they own on developing a ridiculous vape collection. And we lined up next to those who can no longer afford to augment their current array of devices. We care, and that’s why there’s now a Home for Vapers.

Then men chased a football in France, women in shorts grunted on Wimbledon courts and lots of people cheated while running about and jumping a bit in Brazil. We can do that, we decided. But we can do it better: the Stealthvape International World Vape Championathon.

We wrote to the Department of Health to point out that they could reduce spending but still reduce smoking rates and improve the health of the nation. Unfortunately, Jeremy Hunt did not turn up to our meeting in Hooters so we drank the sangria ourselves. Not stopping there, we also contacted the Ministry of Defense with some brilliant ideas about doing war on the cheap – all thanks to vapers. The letter wasn’t just another poor excuse to go to Hooters again. That would have been sad.

Maybe the augmented vaping idea wasn’t brilliant. Maybe the plans for the Museum of Vaping hadn’t been fully thought through. Maybe. But our Efficacy of Vaping Survey was a blinding success. Thirty brief questions, with only one mistake from the fool who typed them in, the Stealthvape Efficacy Survey produced some fantastic information and was covered by a number of other people.

Whatever happens in the big world, we hope that the end of the year finds you happy and healthy – and we wish that for you and yours going into 2017. Have a great New Year.

*Click* The torch is now on and shining up into my face. The only sound you can hear is that of the wood gently crackling in the fire. If you get scared then hold someone’s hand, if you need the toilet then only go in pairs because it might not be safe out there.

Our tale begins with five vapers in a car, late at night. They were heading to the cabin in the woods for a thematic vape meet, but the rain was coming down so fast it made reading the road signs impossible. Rounding the bend *bump*

What was that? Had they just driven over a possessed woman? Maybe it was the noise of a headless man on the roof of the vehicle? No, it was worse – you know it was really bad because now I’m whispering – the last (and only) 120ml bottle of juice had fallen on the floor and emptied! Aaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh!

The car swerved off the road. “We’ll have to make it through the woods on foot,” said the foolhardy one (who clearly didn’t have the patience to wait the four and a half hours till the RAC could get a recovery truck out).

“Wait, it would be better if we split up,” said the idiot (who has obviously never watched a single film in his life).

“Wait,” cried the third, “my atomiser tank is almost empty!” Aaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh!

I’m shrieking now, when I tell you the fourth person screamed: “Noooo! My battery meter shows that my 18650 cell is almost out of charge and I haven’t bought any spares!” Aaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh!

Suddenly, all around them, they could see lights appearing. Stationary, tiny lights. Only they weren’t lights at all, it was the reflection of the cars headlights bouncing off bouncing off what? Evil dolls eyes, that’s what. It’s incredible, isn’t it, that miles from anywhere, in what (on a sunny day) would be a lovely little wood for a walk or a picnic, some evil fly-tipper had dumped a load of broken dolls. Honestly, what goes through the mind of people like that who can’t be bothered to drive the five miles to the nearest council refuse centre? Anyway, I digress.

The silence of darkness became consumed with the sounds of slow shuffling and moaning. Time to time a twig would snap then the shuffling and moaning would continue. Surely this is the part in our story where zombies are rising up at the beginning of an apocalypse? No. It is nothing more than the percussion of our five friends, but then came the most terrible moan: “My vape tastes terrible, the wick is drying and the battery’s dying!”

Our party finally see a glint through the trees. Gasping, barely able to contain their relief that they’d made it, they fall upon the porch and push the creaky wooden door open.

There, inside on the table, a bottle of juice. Then, crying with happiness, they spy a battery charger. Laughter bubbled from relief as they lit the fire and made ready for a future once again.

This is the point where my torch lit voice drops one final time: The charger had an American socket. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!

Sleep safe.

There’s this chap called Mark McKinley, he’s a doctor of clinical psychology. Like every clinical psychologist he spends his days dealing with mental and physical health issues including addiction and compulsive tendencies. When he’s not contemplating the mind he’s writing about it.

McKinley wrote about people and collecting, and according to him everybody collects something.  Whether it’s coin or cereal boxes, comics or barbed wire or even Mersenne primes. McKinley notes that we all collect whatever we collect for different reasons. Some, he posits, collect as part of an investment strategy. OK, fair enough, buying a container load of Protanks in 2013 might not have paid off yet – but just imagine the retirement fund in 90 years time. Is it possible that mods and attys will make it on to the Antiques Roadshow in years to come?

Investment isn’t the only reason to collect according to the doctor. Others do a bit of collecting to meet similar-minded people and expand their social circle. Vapers meet up online and in fields, pubs and exhibition halls to swap tales, tips and laughs. Posting pictures of collections onto social media threads is almost a compulsory part of vaping.

The psychologist has a third bracket for consideration: people collecting to preserve the past. Or rather, to preserve the memories, feelings and emotions that come flooding back when prompted by looking at the collected.

And then there’s also the underlying motivation for embarking on the quest to collect. McKinley reckons that those of us keeping stuff others would throw away fall into three distinct groups. In Group A, there are those of us who live for the quest and relish tracking down an early Hellfire hybrid or unique colour of CE4 to complete our collection. In Group B falls those who wish to see order in the world. These people need to have control over their lives in a way that they don’t get on a day to day basis; so they play collections into groups by make, size, colour or place of origin. Glancing at the alphabetised LP collection to the right nail my group!

Group C collectors are compensators in the same way that middle-aged men drive sports cars or suddenly start going to the gym. These collectors are making up for emptiness in character or possible shortcomings in physical attributes or biological stimulation. I think we can safely agree this last one doesn’t apply to any of us.

All of which is offered up to you by way of an excuse. The next time a purchase is questioned about a purchase, the next time you hear a word of complaint about the space being taken over by vape kit – none of it is your fault, Doc Mark McKinley says so. You are powerless to fight your subconscious; you are biologically programmed to go back online.

Our first prediction was a miss. Oddly, we felt that the Tobacco Products Directive would drive doctor Konstantinos Farsalinos out of a job. We felt the directionless chap would balance a part-time career at Greggs with a night time hobby taking on celebrities in bare-knuckle fighting bouts.

It saddens us deeply that rather than slapping Brad Pitt seven shades of silly, behind the Wetherspoon in Kettering, Farsalinos managed to find enough to keep him occupied in his office. Will he keep up his regular attacks on the anti-vaping zealots during 2017? We’ve no idea until we open a bottle of rum and make up next year’s predictions.

Twelve months ago, when the past was nothing more than the future being peered at through a hangover, it seemed obvious that the Tobacco Products Directive would render YouTube vape reviews obsolete. Obvious to everybody -except those people who do them.

We were wrong – igetcha69 is not filling his time producing videos reviewing cross-stitch patterns in his little spare room. He seemed the type; it remains an avenue to explore, but no. Neither is Mark Toddy Todd devoting all of his waking hours to filling up stamp albums. It should be noted that we do not peer through their windows (not since the court order anyway) and they could be doing these things as hobbies to cope with the stress of vape videos. They probably are. That, or Morris dancing, or doing the painful water bottle challenge. We haven’t looked, but UK Vapers probably hasn’t been renamed and given over to discussion of all things Um Bongo either.

And what about our predictions for the vendors? Here we feel we were close to being correct. Like, if you predict some team will win at something – but they don’t – at least you managed to remember the name of the team. That ought to be impressive to other non-sports fans at the very least.

We felt that Jeremy Mean & the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) would amend legislation to force vendors to undergo costly and lengthy administrative procedures while wearing roller skates, a tutu and singing the theme tune to Happy Days. If you focus on the words “costly”, “lengthy” and “roller skates” you can see we nailed this prophecy.

We didn’t relocate to Zanzibar, Scopes Eliquid are not renting a unit on a trading estate in Syria and Manabush are not currently the country’s leading provider of lawn fertilizer. By dropping the word “wrong” from this sentence, we got 100%.

The 2017 predictions are set to be even better than 2016’s. We have been inundated for tickets for the gala evening, hosted by Les Dennis. We predict he’ll do that impersonation of the woman from Coronation Street. We’ll be correct again.

It’s festive but done properly, just like in the good old days when you could say the word “Christmas”, families bonded over power cuts and all the children had rickets. It’s all brought to you by Stealthvape Television, the only subscription channel based in and available to Cantelupe Road in Bexhill on Sea.

If you aren’t already a customer of SVTV then the Christmas edition of the SVTVR&TVT is bound to wet your whistle – quality programming not seen since Love Thy Neighbour and Robin’s Nest were on ITV.

9am: Nobody normal is up yet so we’re sticking on Noel Edmonds for two hours. He’s dead cheap now because no other channel will touch him. We told him a mod and atty can cure smoking-related cancer and he signed immediately. No idea what he’s doing, we told him to make it juicy.

11am: Early Morning Service. People who don’t believe in religion will be cramming into a Bexhill church to praise the Lord for vaping and to get their faces on television.

12pm: Kylie’s Crackers. The real Kylie may be on Sky but we’ve got Kylie Jenkins from CostCo coming in to show us how to pull a cracker at Christmas using nothing but charm and a lot of Bacardi Breezers.

1pm: The Queen. That’s correct, you read it. We’ve got The Queen a full two hours before she’s on BBC1 doing a warm-up set for us. Liz will be taking you through the steps to make a Clapton coil while regaling us with witty anecdotes about Phil.

1:30pm: Bond at Christmas. Everybody loves a good Bond film on Christmas Day, so we’ve made one with simpering royal correspondent Jennie Bond. She is an evil boss bent on taking over the world with a gigantic vape machine. Or something. To be honest there’s a lot of improvisation because we ran out of ideas as the sherry consumption went up.

Later: Strongmen are doing something with lorries, there are some cartoons and another couple of films we got from Pirate Bay. Seriously, who cares? Everybody’s drunk now.

Autumn is amazing with its leafy hues and low-level light, as the chlorophyll ebbs from the surround its green is replaced by a spectacular range of reds, oranges and browns. Describing the vista, painted by the hand of a planet spinning away from the Sun, is what the word sumptuous was created for.

Summer is simply a warmer version of spring, and even then it gets it wrong more often than not. Winter should have been sued for misrepresentation decades ago – part and parcel of being winter should be the provision of a thick blanket of snow to prevent people from having to do things they’d prefer not to.

Not autumn, you don’t mistake autumn for summer – certainly not since councils stopped sweeping up the leaves for children to kick. Admittedly, we don’t get here easily. Summer ends up like a late night town centre drunk, stumbling home via a kebab shop. Eventually life is all hot mugs of tea, a good vape and morning frost.

This time of year offers up the best of colours in the same way vape does. While caution has always been the watchword with regards strong colours in liquids, there are plenty of other visual delights.

The changing of the metal season is a gradual slide into darkness. While some relish the build up of a deep patina for others it signifies an impending rebirth. With a polishing cloth and the substance of choice, brass leaps from its winter-like slumber into full-blown summer glory. Radiant golds present only one problem as hands leave instant marks. How many vapers sit around after a good polish cupping their mod in tissue so they can vape and preserve the sheen?

It is why the all-black devices or stainless steel rigs have never appealed. Those who prefer their appearance are welcome to them. The reliable countenance pales when compared with the wonder of polished copper.

The only downside is when cleaning up copper pins. They undergo their transformation with some lemon juice in a little plastic beaker, from brown to pink with nothing more than gentle agitation. And then forgotten about until the hand that was reaching for a warming autumnal sloe gin picks up the wrong vessel by mistake.

Fresh copper loses its appeal somewhat when the taste of sloe and tonic is replaced by oxide and lemon. The love of colour is lost at this moment and not even the pretty leaves can help.

This year has been slated as one wreaking havoc and carnage at every turn, momentous global events and the loss of respected entertainers. Vaping has never been under such pressure from legislators and officious public health dictators – so how about we pull a leaf from the Brexit and Trump campaigns?

Let’s be fair, the California Department of Public Health open that door when it launched its Still Blowing Smoke campaign. When Stanton Glantz drives along Research Highway, truth is just something standing on a corner he briefly waves at. It’s time for some post-truth pro-vaping facts to get out there.

POST-TRUTH VAPING FACT 1

Vaping is sexy. In studies we just made up: vapers report lasting longer than anybody else, having more partners than anybody else AND have orgasms that are 74.2% more enjoyable than other people’s.

POST-TRUTH VAPING FACT 2

Switching to electronic cigarettes has been linked to improved performance at work and more promotions. A leading researcher who doesn’t exist said: “In 7 out of 10 cases, someone who vaped occupied the more senior position and took home at least 20% of their salary in annual bonuses.” Having not spoken to a recruitment consultant, it transpires that vapers are more likely to be listed for interview at the application stage and are always offered the job on the spot.

POST-TRUTH VAPING FACT 3

Eliquid doesn’t contain any carcinogens when vaped. In fact, it carries all the danger of a puppy in a fluffy blanket in a room full of pillows. Since 2016, all juice manufacturers have replaced any diacetyl and aldehydes with happiness and love – which is what the rest of the liquid was anyway.

POST-TRUTH VAPING FACT 4

Vaping repels mosquitos, vermin, spiders and anything else you don’t like – such as people selling double-glazing. Anything that upsets you can now be cured with a quick vape.

We have launched a couple of products to accommodate the dawn of this new vaping era. We will no longer be selling reels of wire as two 5cm lengths will do everything you could hope for. They will never go black and can continually be reformed into different coil types.

Our new wick may look like all the old wicks, but this is post-truth wick. It really does wick faster, stays cleaner and tastes better than anything else. Of course, none of this may be true – but does anybody care anymore?