The cigarette is perhaps the 20th century's most successful and most familiar consumer product. It's also one of its biggest killers.

It's made huge fortunes and built vast corporations who are fighting to protect the cigarette and the wealth it represents.

Knowing all we do about the risks of smoking, the endurance of this tiny white tube of tobacco may seem absurd. But the truth behind its tenacity is also amazing.

Just how amazing is being revealed by a new three-part BBC series, Tobacco Wars, which tells the story of the cigarette's 100-year reign.

Taking viewers through the saga of the billions of pounds made from cigarettes, the history of legislation and the human cost is BBC News presenter Michael Buerk.

It's a role for which he is well qualified. Buerk had his first cigarette at the age of 12. By the time he was 20, he was on a pack a day.

And despite having now been a non-smoker for more than two decades, he admits that his love affair with the weed has never quite lost its spark.

"I really did love smoking and everything about it: The apparatus, the procedure, the hit of the nicotine in the lungs and if it hadn't been for the health implications I would probably still be smoking.

"So I was keen to do something that wasn't just an anti-smoking film," he says.

Tobacco Wars, he adds, shows both the pleasure and pain of smoking, thus striking just the right note.

Fatal attraction

The story of the cigarette is, the series explains, effectively the story of the 20th century - it has had such a massive influence on everyday life.

All the movie stars smoked

Cigarettes invented mass production and advertising. They became as vital to both World Wars as ammunition and tanks. They have created a $200bn business, ranking alongside both the oil and car industries worldwide.

And much of this success is down to a heady cocktail of elements which, combined, have made the lure of the cigarette hard to beat.

First and foremost, is the addictive nature of nicotine. But there's more to it than that, as Michael Buerk explains:

"Cigarettes are habit forming, they produce an immediate physiological effect. They are extremely convenient and to young people they have become a symbol of maturity.

"As a teenager I smoked because I thought it made me seem more adult. Cigarettes were not just a fashion accessory for the young reporter. They were a necessary right of passage."

Christy Turlington: Smoked from boredom

All the famous names interviewed for the series agree. Comedian Dave Allen smoked "to be part of the gang".

Singer Sandie Shaw says she started "in case anyone asked her out". Model Christy Turlington smoked to alleviate boredom.

They also explain the influence of the stars on the silver screen.

"In the movies everyone smoked. The cigarette was used by actors and actresses as a means of conveying a want and a desire for each other. Bette Davis could eat cigarettes," says Dave Allen.

But by the 1950s the very unglamorous side of smoking - cancer - began to emerge.

Human cost

In making the series Buerk met people whose lives have been destroyed by tobacco (although his lungs, he found out after examination, have escaped unscathed).

Yet for all the waste and pain there are still those who say they cannot give up - one woman in America had throat cancer but still smoked through a hole in her neck.

It is harsh reality like this that brings to the fore questions about the morality of those who have promoted cigarettes.

Over the century, the cigarette has been subject to little or no regulation - despite nicotine being lethally toxic in anything more than very small doses.

Furthermore, once evidence began to link smoking with lung cancer, it was twisted and suppressed.

The Lucky Strike girl now has throat and lung cancer

But Buerk says that when he met some of the cigarette company executives he was quietly impressed.

"Some of them were really clever, honourable people who had rationalised it in their minds. Their argument is that smoking doesn't have the same effect on everybody and that, yes, it can damage people but so can a lot of things," he says.

Personal responsibility

However, many people are extremely bitter at the promotion of smoking. One of them is former champion snooker player Alex "Hurricane" Higgins.

He now has cancer after years of heavy smoking in snooker tournaments sponsored by cigarette companies.

Alex Higgins: Cancer after years smoking on the snooker circuit

He also feels very angry that he might have acted as a smoking role model for others.

But says Buerk: "At the end of the day he was responsible for his smoking. Even I knew at the age of 15 that smoking was not good for me."

That said, the tone of Tobacco Wars is not doom and gloom. It tells a multi-faceted story that reveals as much about human nature as it does the workings of a multi-billion pound industry.

And there is no question of it trying to preach, as Buerk is keen to stress: "People decide for themselves if they want to smoke or not.

"The programme will probably stop some people smoking but that is not its purpose and I hope that comes across."