Wigan's Kym Marsh shares her experiences as an ex-smoker as she urges people to kick the habit

That’s not just staying healthy for her three children and three grandchildren, but because her dad, a heavy smoker, had a cardiac arrest at the age of 49 – an age Marsh is herself approaching.

The Wigan actress and TV presenter started smoking in her late teens and continued on and off for 25 years.

She kicked the habit a few years ago and is now marking No Smoking Day (March 12) by appearing in an NHS film to encourage the nation’s smokers to quit.

“The final turning point was my grandchildren really, and obviously my kids,” she says. “I think it was becoming a grandparent, and realising I’m still fairly young to be a grandparent and I’ve got the opportunity of doing some really amazing, adventurous things with them and I don’t want to cut that short.

“I knew that I shouldn’t be smoking, because my dad had a massive cardiac arrest when he was 49, and thankfully recovered and we got him for many more years, but that was all down to the fact that he was a very, very heavy smoker.

“And I just thought ‘Come on Kym, this should be the time when you look at your life and go, actually, I want to be around’. I’m not going to let something like what happened to my dad take me away from my grandchildren and my kids.”

Marsh, 48, who played Michelle Connor in Coronation Street for 13 years and now presents BBC One’s Morning Live with Gethin Jones, admits giving up cigarettes was tough.

Describing herself as a “social smoker”, she says: “It’s not an easy journey. For me, it was the social aspect of it – I found that quite hard. It was difficult going out and being in environments with people who enjoyed smoking. It was quite a hard cycle to break.”

She took advice from her GP and was helped by the NHS Stoptober campaign.

“That was good,” she says. “For me, it was about trying to break that cycle of weekends and being out with my friends, choosing places that we went to that made it more difficult for smoking to be accessible, or being with people who didn’t smoke.

“I just tried to remove myself from those situations as much as possible, until I got to the point where I felt that I didn’t miss it any more.”

Marsh admits she had a few smoking “wobbles on and off over the years”, but proudly declares: “I’ve not had that craving for a long time now, and I think eventually it does go away.”

Not only was she pleased that she no longer smelt of cigarettes, but she noticed her sense of taste and smell improved.

Although some smokers worry about putting on weight if they quit, as they grab sweets and junk food instead, Marsh reports that never happened to her because she replaced fags with fitness.

“I combined it with a whole health and fitness thing,” she says. “As I’m getting older, I’m getting more and more aware of my health, and trying to take care of myself a lot more, and I combined all of that with quitting to have a healthy mindset.

“I used distraction as part of my quitting journey, so I would choose something like going to the gym or going for a run – trying to replace bad things with good is always a really good tip.

“Once you make that decision that you want to quit, it’s about trying to find healthy activities or healthy things to replace smoking. Distraction is always a good one, and if you can get into going to the gym or even going for a walk, things like that, just to take your mind off it, I think the cravings pass quicker if you’ve got something to occupy yourself.”

Marsh did a lot of running, completing 10ks for charity, although she says she can’t run as much now due to knee problems.

“I’ve loved running so much over the last few years, and I think my general health and ability to sustain those kinds of running events was made a lot easier after quitting, because you find you can breathe better,” she says.

“There’s nothing worse after having been out and smoking than waking up the next day feeling like something’s crushing your chest, because that’s the only way I could describe it. It was like I could feel the congestion, if that sounds not too gross. And I’d have a cough intermittently and I’d clear my throat quite a lot. That was made a lot better once I finally properly kicked it.”

Marsh stresses that there’s so much support available to help smokers quit, saying: “The message is it’s National No Smoking Day and we want to encourage the six million smokers to attempt to make that step to quitting. And the key word is attempt, because you’ve got to keep trying and it’s not going to be easy.

“There may be times when people have a wobble, and you can’t beat yourself up for that, but get back on the horse. It’s a tough journey, but you can do it.”

She added: “We need to think about what we want from our life and what we want for our future. And when I look at my kids and I look at my grandchildren, they’re very much my future. My kids and my grandkids are my everything, and I want to be there for them.

“I want to see my grandchildren get married, I want to have great-grandchildren, and I want to be there to see it. I want to be able to enjoy it and play with them and run with them, and have that kind of life, and that’s why I’ve chosen not to smoke.”

For help and support download the free NHS Quit Smoking app.