Coronation Street actress, Alison King has been ordered to start smoking on screen despite the fact that she is pregnant.

Alison smoked in real life until recently finding out that she was expecting, however show bosses have demanded that she starts lighting up on screen once mor,e as a sign of the stress she is being put under by her boyfriend Tony. They have allowed her to smoke herbal cigarettes rather than full strength normal ones, but some experts doubt the benefits of this move.

“She isn’t best pleased. It was hard enough for her to give up in real life,” a source told The Mirror. “And even inhaling smoke from herbal tobacco surely can’t be a good thing for a mum-to-be.”

Dr. John Moore-Gillon, from the British Lung Federation, confirmed: “If you’re smoking herbal cigarettes, all you’re doing is substituting the burning leaves of one sort of plant for another. People try them because they think that since they don’t contain nicotine they are safer.

“Ordinary cigarettes contain several thousand compounds, but you still get tar from herbal cigarettes which could do you just as much harm.”