Wikipedia
Smoking concerts were live performances, usually of music, before an audience of men only; popular during the Victorian era. These social occasions were instrumental in introducing new musical forms to the public. At these functions men would smoke and speak of politics while listening to live music. These popular gatherings were sometimes held at hotels. The crew of HMS Curlew attended a Smoker aboard USS Huron in Wei-hai-wei harbour, China, on 19 August 1921.
Although the concerts are now obsolete, the term continued and is used for student-organised variety performances, especially at Oxford and Cambridge. Annual Smoking Concerts were held at Imperial College London into the 1980s and continue at Glasgow University Union.
The saying "Booking for smoking concerts now" came into use at this time meaning that a person had recovered and was in the prime of health. This saying is used in the works of writer P.G. Wodehouse.
The Liverpool Medical Students Society at the University of Liverpool School of Medicine still hold an annual smoking concert, a tradition going back 130 years. Each of the five year groups present a play annually.1
Usage examples of "smoking concert".
It lowered the record of the chap in the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow he's going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says 'How far is that?
It might be that his absences from Sunday school in the cause of art had left him in later years a trifle shaky on the subject of the Kings of Judah, but his hard-won accomplishment had made him in request at every smoking concert at Oxford.
A noisy smoking concert where you will meet eighty men is better for you than the patient or two whom you might have seen at home.