Hookah pipe smoking is bubbling up in Wolverhampton

It is a Middle Eastern tradition that dates back more than 400 years – but the social craze is now spreading to the West Midlands.

Wolverhampton's first shisha bar recently opened its doors and is proving popular with both young and old. It follows the opening of Scarab shisha bar in Stourbridge 16 months ago.

Kamran Malik, the man behind Starbuzz in St Georges Parade, Wolverhampton, said business is booming.

The 25-year-old from Yardley, Birmingham, said: "We opened on New Year's Eve. It was quite quiet on the night as I don't think many people knew about us.

"But since then, word has got out that we are here and more and more people are coming to have a go."

Customers at Starbuzz can choose between fragrant fruit-flavoured tobacco or non-nicotine herbal molasses, and smoke it in exotic water pipes known as hookah pipes.

To smoke it a metal dish of charcoal is set alight at the top of the pipe to burn the flavoured tobacco or molasses and, as the smoker puffs on a long rubber tube, the smoke is cooled and filtered as it passes through a water reservoir inside the pipe before reaching the mouth. One customer Gohar Khan, aged 21, a student at Wolverhampton University visits the bar around once a month.

He said: "I've been doing this since I was 14, it's flavoured and not as harsh as normal smoking.

"It's a bit soothing and chills you out. I like coming with friends because its a social thing and its a good atmosphere.

"I don't see it as a problem because you don't do it every day."

Mr Malik said a large number of his customers were students from the city's university. But he said older customers and in some cases families of four were visiting the bar.

He said: "It's the first shisha bar in Wolverhampton and one of only a handful in the Black Country. I opened this bar in Wolverhampton because I thought there would be a market for one.

Mr Malik sells flavours such as apple, mint and even special concoctions such as Skittles. Scarab Cafe in Lower High Street, Stourbridge, is attracting students who enjoy sitting outside and smoking shisha.. Egyptian owner Ahmed Attia, said: "I'm trying to turn this into more of a typical restaurant and cafe but local students enjoy the shisha pipes and often ask for them."

Recent health warnings from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said spending one hour smoking flavoured tobacco through a shisha pipe can be the same as inhaling the smoke of 100 cigarettes. Mr Malik, of Starbuzz, said: "We find people who come here, only do it maybe once or twice a week."