Senor Nice

HOWARD MARKS

Straight Life from Wales to South America

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First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Harvill Secker

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Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

Also by Howard Marks

Acknowledgements

During the mid-1980s Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines and owned twenty-five companies trading throughout the world. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia.

Following a worldwide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana. He was released in 1995.
Señor Nice
tells the story of what happened next.

ALSO BY HOWARD MARKS

Mr Nice

The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Edna Rhyfelgar Marks

I would like to thank Giles Cooper, who has been my close friend and a perfect manager of my live shows for the last eight years. Without his tenacity, kindness, and understanding, this book would never have been started.

The following family members, friends, and associates deserve far more than mere acknowledgements. You know what you did. Thank you so much.

Jamie Acott; Richard Allen-Turner; Martyn Baker; Angelina Basco; Dave Beer; Dafydd Bell; Crofton Black; Martin Blackhall; Scott Blakey; Ernesto Blume; Leroy Bowen; Charlie Breaker; Mike Broderick; Arthur Brown; Alun Buffry; Tina Butler; Mary Carson; Anna Collings; Tim Corrigan; Dave Courtney; Tel Currie; Bernie Davies; Suzanne Dean; Dirty Sanchez; George Duffin; Briony Everroad; Emily Faccini; Claudette Finnegan; Mark Gehring; John Goad; David Godwin; Goldie Lookin Chain; Maria Golia; Adenor Gondim; Simon Greenberg; Lee Harris; Lisa Harvey; Rhys Ifans; JC001; Les Johnson; Ian Johnstone; Justin Kerrigan; Jimmy Knight; Marty Langford; Christian Lewis; Nick Linford; Kelly Major; Patrick Marks; Amber Marks; Francesca Marks; Myfanwy Marks; Polly Marshall; Mike and Claire McCay; Biff Mitchell; Amanda Monroe; Les Morrison; Claire Nicolson;
Observer
Travel Section; John Oliver; Jimmy Page; Jason Parkinson; James Perkins; Johnny Pickston; Werner Pieper; Joey Pyle; Justin Rees; Mark Reeve; Bruce Reynolds; Charlie Richardson; Sharon Robbins; Susan Sandon; Jim Shreim; Phil Sparrowhawk; Frank Steffan; Stereophonics; Super Furry Animals; Pauline Townsend; Marcus van der Kolk; Hywel Williams; Stuart Williams; Clare Wilshaw.

A very special thank you to Caroline Brown and to my editor Geoff Mulligan.

When a person endeavours to recall his early life in its entirety, he finds it is not possible: he is like one who ascends a hill to survey the prospect before him on a day of heavy cloud and shadow, who sees at a distance some feature in the landscape while all else remains in obscurity. The scenes people events we are able by an effort to call up do not present themselves in order but in isolated spots or patches, vividly seen in the midst of a wide shrouded landscape. It is easy to fall into the delusion that the few things thus distinctly remembered and visualised are precisely those which were most important in our life and on that account were saved by memory. Unconscious artistry sneaks in to erase unseemly lines and blots, to retouch, colour, shade, and falsify the picture.

Far Away and Long Ago
, W. H. Hudson

Wherever I travelled, whatever scam or profession I was engaged in, I always returned to my birthplace Kenfig Hill: as an Oxford student on vacation, a source of pride to my parents and no doubt mystery and resentment to my friends; in the 1970s before skipping bail while awaiting an Old Bailey trial for smuggling tons of hashish in the equipment of rock bands such as Pink Floyd; in the 80s celebrating my acquittal, having been charged with importing fifteen tons of Colombian marijuana into the UK (I persuaded the court I was working for the Mexican secret service); in the 90s, having served a lengthy sentence at the maximum-security US Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, to spend time with my parents, who had hung on to life just long enough to share my experience of freedom.

Winter 2001. Paddington, looking like an airport with its check-in facilities, escalators and shopping malls, was wet and windy – a foretaste of South Wales, to where its trains, on the hour every hour, were constantly bound. I bought a ticket to Bridgend, 200 miles away, gateway to the coal mining valleys and the nearest railway station to Kenfig Hill. Notices
depressingly announced that all Great Western services were now strictly non-smoking. Outside the ticket office a conveyor belt of sushi and sashimi plates trundled around in front of delayed passengers. I sat down, took half a spliff out of my top pocket, lit it, and stared at the raw fish and rice whizzing around.

‘Sorry, sir. No smoking,’ the sushi chef commanded abruptly.

How could anyone purporting to be Japanese disallow smoking? Japan has always had the highest cigarette consumption in the world and the lowest rate of lung cancer, a fact I found most comforting.

‘Are you Japanese?’ I asked the menacing, knife-wielding chef.

‘Korean.’

‘Maybe that explains it.’

Irritated, even slightly enraged, I ambled off to the platform, got on the waiting train, and sat down at an empty table as the train began to fill with people off to see Wales play England at rugby at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.

‘
Swt Mai
, Howard?’ It was Gruff Rhys, lead singer and guitarist of the Super Furry Animals, on his way to Cardiff to record his next album. ‘Going to see the folks or down for the match?’

‘No. Dad’s dead, and Mam is very ill. She’s living in Yorkshire now with my sister. And these days I’ve completely lost faith in the Welsh rugby team. In the 1970s no one could beat us; now, we can’t win a match.’

‘It must have been great back then. Did you play when you were at school?’

‘I was never any good, Gruff, but yes, I did.’

‘What position?’

‘Second row forward. In fact, two of the school’s front row, John Lloyd and Geoff Young, went on to play for Wales and the British Lions when they beat the All Blacks.’

‘So you’ve had your head stuck between a couple of very famous arses.’

‘That’s one way of putting it, Gruff, but I’m not here for sport; I’m doing a show tonight at the Pavilion, Porthcawl.’

‘Yeah? Great! Can me and a couple of the boys come?’

‘Of course. I’ll put you all down on the list.’

‘
Diolch
, Howard. I’ll get us a couple of beers now.’

My rehabilitation has taken a curious path which never ceases to branch out in unexpected directions, of which one is a career as a stand-up comic. This evolved from fulfilling vaguely contractual commitments to promote and publicise my autobiography,
Mr Nice
, by appearing on TV and radio shows, being interviewed by book reviewers and other journalists, and reading passages from the book in bookshops. Many authors arrogantly take the view that their creative output speaks for itself and excuse themselves from such duties. I couldn’t begin to take that risk and am a firm believer in blatant self-promotion, but I found it difficult to come to terms with bookshops as suitable venues for any event. First, the reading has to take place during normal working hours, when most of the staff want to get home and most of the potential punters can’t attend. Second, the booze is in short supply and of poor quality. Third, the reading takes place against a background of all the competition, which seems to me an absurd marketing strategy. Admittedly, some bookshops go out of their way to create a sensible ambience at an appropriate hour, but generally book readings are sterile, boring affairs. Getting a laugh from the audience always helps, so I included as many funny passages as I could find. The reading would be followed by a question-and-answer session, which was invariably more stimulating than the reading itself.

This was during the mid-1990s, when other writers such as Irvine Welsh, Nik Cohn, Roddy Doyle and Nick Cave were beginning to do readings in pubs and clubs. I attended a few
and was encouraged to do the same, but I felt the authors invariably made two important errors: they would insist the bar till stayed inactive when reading so no booze could be purchased, and they would read passages precisely as they were written. Very few if any authors write prose with the thought that one day they might have to read it standing on a stage in front of an audience hell bent on having a good time. I modified my extracts severely, bearing the listeners in mind, and let the cash tills ring and the booze flow all night. It worked.

Mr Nice
did not draw a veil over my consumption of drugs and my desire to see them legalised, so much of each question-and-answer session was devoted to that topic. This suited me perfectly as probably for the first time in my life, I had a sincere social agenda. Organisations devoted to drug legalisation invited me to speak. Universities asked me to debate. At the end of each debate or talk I would be asked to sign copies of
Mr Nice
. It couldn’t have turned out better if it had been planned: I could use the book readings to advance my social agenda and use my agenda to sell books.

I did both talks and readings without charging – it never occurred to me to even ask for a fee – but in August 1997 I read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and was approached afterwards by comedy promoters Avalon, who offered to finance a series of one-man shows and pay me £500 a gig. I agreed. Within a few months I had sold out at Shepherd’s Bush Empire more times than anyone except Abba. A year later, I did twenty-three consecutive shows at the Edinburgh International Festival. I enjoyed learning how to banter with audiences, battle with hecklers, cope with cock-ups and experiment with multimedia.