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By BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer 01/21/2008

Staff Writer

Winthrop funeral director Leon Roberts picked a large audience when he stated his intent to give up smoking -- the world, through the window of "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Roberts made that announcement in Chicago as he was being taped for the show which will air on Tuesday at 4 p.m. on CBS.

He and eight women smokers were selected as guests on a show devoted to the effects of smoking and ways to quit.

Roberts, 44, a one- or two-pack a day smoker, failed to stay off them last year after halting for four months.

A friend who is a producer of the show knew he had resumed the habit and called him Jan. 9.

"Are you ready to quit? she asked. "Do you want to be on Oprah?"

He was told to tape himself smoking, saying why and when and where he smoked.

He sent a tape of himself coughing in his garage as he lit his first cigarette of the day, smoking while he was driving and while he was ice-fishing.

That earned him an invitation to appear.

Roberts drew a laugh from the audience. "They took a 30-year-old woman and showed what she'd look like at 65 with and without smoking. I said, 'If she's alive at 65,' and Oprah said, 'Wouldn't you know, that's coming from a funeral director.'"

He was flown to Chicago over the weekend, transported in a stretch limousine, put up at the posh Omni Chicago Hotel on Michigan Avenue, given $450 in vouchers for food and amenities in the hotel.

"I was taken care of pretty well," he said.

Then last Monday he and a dozen other smokers were given state-of-the-art lung and heart scans at Heart Scan of Chicago, along with a bank of other tests.

Roberts -- unlike some of the others -- got good news.

"I'd been smoking for 20-25 years, and I have no scarring, nothing on my lungs," Roberts said. "The heart scan showed I have one teeny weeny piece of calcified plaque."

He was also told there was some soft plaque "but if I quit smoking, it would go away," he said. "I was elated to find I didn't have anything wrong. I have a second chance."

Roberts and eight women went on the show, and most of the others had more serious health problems from smoking.

"One woman had a 70 percent blockage, several had emphysema and lung spots, and one had a widower-maker clot in an artery," he said.

"What she did for all these people, it was really important," he added. "They could never have afforded to have those tests done. She may have even saved some people's lives."

The audience for "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that day was composed exclusively of smokers. "She wanted us smokers on the stage to identify with people in the audience," he said. "She kept asking, 'Anybody want a cigarette?'"

"Oprah doesn't tolerate cigarettes," Roberts said. "She can't." He said Winfrey told him she could identify with all her audiences except this one.

"Food's my thing," she told him.

He acknowledged that kicking the habit is not easy for him or anyone else.

"One woman with horrible news about herself is still smoking," he said. "One other woman and I were the only ones who quit that day."

"I weaned off a couple days before so I wouldn't be a mess on the show," Roberts said. "I decided that day I was going to quit."

He said Winfrey intends to get as many people as she can to quit, and producers estimate 93 million people will watch the show.

On his third day without cigarettes, he talked rapidly as he played with a pen from Heart Scan. "I need something in my hands," he said. "The first day was not so bad, the second was hard, and today, I was singing in the shower."

Those who want to see whether Roberts is staying off the cigarettes can check Oprah.com. "I'm supposed to tape a few times a week when I've had a hard time and keep a diary of how I feel now that I've quit," he said.

"You can log onto it and see. I'll feel like a complete loser if I can't quit."

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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