ROLL UP...

Andy Beckett meets a 'star' who really has the joint jumpin'

Jupes and Dav are two Asian lads from Slough, about the same age as Jack
Straw's son William. Last Friday evening, as the east wind stabbed into
west London, they were shuffling around on the pavement, with a purpose in
mind that might trouble the Home Secretary.

'We can't give you our real names,' said Jupes. Beneath his big new coat,
his slim feet were skittering about. 'My mum doesn't know I smoke
cannabis.' He had a plastic bag in his hand. It held something weighty and
rectangular, perhaps the size of a paperback. And that was what it was: a
dirty-edged and creased copy of the autobiography of Howard Marks.

The cover photograph was sly and familiar: dark eyes, open shirt, the
solicitous smile of 'Mr Nice', Britain's favourite drug dealer. Behind
Jupes and Dav, poster-size, it was all over the front of the Shepherd's
Bush Empire. Marks was due to read there in an hour. Dav had bought
tickets. Jupes was chattering faster and faster: 'I've read the book - it's
wicked. I'm definitely going to get him to sign it ... He's so charismatic.
I've seen lots of clips of him on telly.' He caught his breath. 'I'd vote
for him.' There were more willing constituents inside. The Empire holds
about a thousand people; Marks hadn't quite managed that but the alcoves
were heaving. There were students, sensible young men with gelled hair and
older men with suits and briefcases. There were many women, at least two
wearing pearls. There were couples and the odd hippie, wandering from wall
to wall. Men in expensive overcoats, with no-messing faces, made mobile
phone calls.

Then they sat down and laughed. Marks had done this before: the
half-stagger onstage, the slouch among his props (bottle of whisky, bottle
of wine, enough weed for a tour), the gentle bobbing of his big stoner's
head, a shaggy emblem, still, of his great days in the seventies. He told
the stories well. He did his Oxford scrapes from the sixties, as his Welsh
valley lilt rose and fell; then his pot-smuggling through southern Ireland,
his pints with co-operative IRA men, his pipes with productive Afghan
tribesmen.

And as he talked, he smoked. His joints were so fat that bits dropped from
them. He began an anecdote about a dope factory in Kashmir, took a long
pull, smiled, and forgot how to continue. The cheers brought him round. In
every row, fingers were busy with Rizla papers. After an hour, the theatre
was a pale-grey haze.

It was time for the Q&A. Queues formed behind microphones. The questioners
pursed their lips and tried not to giggle. Did Howard have any drug money
stashed away? 'There may be a safety deposit box somewhere.' Had he tried
Ecstasy? 'Yes. It was an injection of pleasure.' What did he think of
skunk? 'I get out of my head on skunk, yeah.' And the Welsh rugby team? The
state of the Rhondda? The state of the IRA? The final questioner just
thanked Marks for coming. A well-dressed young man said, to laughs and
applause: 'You made me want to go out and be a drug smuggler.' Howard Marks
is 52. He has a face as creased as an old banknote. He is always stoned.
Yet over the last three years, since he emerged from prison exile in
Indiana, he has become what the New Musical Express can unblushingly call
'an all-round counter-cultural figurehead'. That face is almost a logo now:
tobacco brown, with its puff of white spliff smoke and tumble of black
curls, grinning at gigs and gallery openings, in nightclubs, on magazine
columns, record sleeves, websites, flyers. Marks has been booked by the
Shepherd's Bush Empire for three more Fridays. Ticket prices are up from
#10 to #12 and a national tour will follow. Sales of Mr Nice, which has
been out for a year and a half, are still accelerating. At Virgin
Megastores, it is stacked beside Hanif Kureishi and Irvine Welsh.

Howard's two agents would expect nothing less. David Godwin, the literary
one, also represents Arundhati Roy, the last Booker Prize winner; James
Herring, the theatrical one, does Frank Skinner and David Baddiel for
Avalon Promotions, the most prominent comedy agency. Week by week, Marks
keeps all these interested parties happy: he goes on television; he chooses
records in Melody Maker; he writes for Loaded and the Big Issue; and, most
usefully perhaps, he runs an Internet site that promotes all his projects.

These are overlapping and various. Besides the readings, there is the audio
version of Mr Nice. And a voiceover for a dance record (Happy 'n' High). A
T-shirt ('Time Well Wasted'). Appearances on discussion panels. Attempts to
get arrested for pot smoking. Attempts to get elected to Parliament. An
application for the post of government 'drugs czar'. Cleverly, each stunt
and spin-off carries the banner of cannabis legalisation. Marks seems to be
campaigning, not cashing in.

Many a hippie, however, has had an eye for a cottage industry. Far from
slackening his ambitions, Marks's hourly joints and japes have made them
palatable. Last summer, for example, he made a film about sloth for Channel
4. 'I know society sees me as slothful,' he began, as he shuffled, in his
wreck of a shirt, along seething London pavements. 'Idle. Stoned most of
the time. The worst kind of sinner in today's work-obsessed world... ' A
dozen sentences later, he had advertised his life story, the plot of Mr
Nice, and his clear suitability for documentaries.

Marks is just as smooth to interview. He looks impeccably shambolic: his
trainers untied, a teenager's puffa jacket with 'Drug Enforcement' on the
back, a purple record bag swinging from his stooped shoulders. He flops in
a leather armchair and reaches straight for his Rizlas. Then he talks about
work: 'I'm still full of improvements I'd like to make to the show. Like
changing the presentation... And I might want sponsors for the pot-dealing
game on the website. They could have their own flags on the board.' His
wide charmer's eyes flick up: 'I'd only accept makers of psychoactive
products, of course... ' Marks's mobile phone lies on the table in front of
him. He has a notebook in his front pocket. In his dealing days, as his
publicity always mentions, he had '43 aliases, 89 phone lines and 25
companies'. He still lives for the trill of the quick opportunity. This
means, in effect, very little stoned lounging at all: 'I'm terribly active.
[As a dealer] I worked terribly hard, harder than anyone I knew. I still
do. I get up early and I work.' He always has. Before his five dead years
in prison, even before his two decades as the supplier of - if you believe
him - a tenth of the world's marijuana, Marks was an industrious lad. At
school in South Wales, he worked for his O-levels with 'obsession and
tenacity'. He got 10, 'with very high grades', became head prefect, then
escaped down the M4 to Balliol College at Oxford.

Mr Nice plays this part of his life, like the rest of it, for laughs:
Marks's Elvis impersonations, Marks's blunder through college etiquette,
the female students' surrender to his earthy valley charms. Yet the
quick-witted pragmatism of all this stands out just as sharply. Marks left
Oxford with a network: contacts for getting pot, certainly, but future
famous authors (Redmond O'Hanlon) and journalists (Lynn Barber) too.

For the next two decades, Howard gave them gossip. His small village of
disguises, his escalating scams, his entanglements with MI6 - all these
brought 'the fame I'd longed for ever since I was a weak swot at school'.
Marks started a publicity sideline 'to get off on the glamour and
notoriety', giving an interview to Tatler and collaborating on his first
biography, High Time: The Life And Times Of Howard Marks (1984).

Being caught, in 1990, only swelled his profile. Lynn Barber was on hand,
at the Independent On Sunday, to offer 4,000 words of sympathy to 'an old
boyfriend of mine'. And while Marks was in Indiana, trying to humour crack
dealers (he taught English - he didn't 'slouch it'), he kept popping up in
the diary columns of the posher English newspapers: in 1992, signing a
petition for pot legalisation; in 1993, as Bill Clinton's supposed
predecessor at 46 Leckford Road, Oxford. This newspaper interviewed him in
prison, at length. Literary agents watched out for an early release.

When it came, in April 1995, David Godwin was the quickest. He had worked
on High Time; this time, he was on the phone to Marks within a day. He flew
to Marks's house in Majorca, stayed the weekend and suggested Marks write
an autobiography. Godwin got the first chapter the same week. Marks got a
contract for #100,000. His publicised plans to become a prison lawyer were
quietly put aside.

The marketing of Mr Nice was a small masterclass in advertising synergy.
Barber did another interview, and Marks said he had stopped smoking pot. A
rising Welsh band called the Super Furry Animals put him on their album
cover. The Guardian ran a serialisation and in September 1996, when the
book went on sale, the Super Furry Animals kindly released a single called
Hangin' With Howard Marks.

Lots of people still wanted to, he swiftly realised. After being out of
circulation, in jail and on the run, since the mid-eighties, Marks looked
less like a wearisome hippie and more like a prophet of the new and vast
British drug culture. He started giving talks: at the back of bookshops, at
Megatripolis, a kind of monthly indoor Glastonbury in London, at the Oxford
Union debating society. A lot of the time, too, Marks himself just hung
around, leaning against walls in clubs, receiving admirers and rolling
joints, just talking in his soft, confiding way. The chuckle still worked.
Last year he decided to stand for Parliament, in three seats at once.

The Legalise Cannabis Party did not win terribly many votes in May: 765 in
Norwich South, 512 in Norwich North and 388 in Southampton Test. But that
was only partly the point; he was also winning customers. 'There were
hordes of people following him around,' says one of Marks's campaign
workers. 'Everything he said, everything he did, was quotable.' Over the
summer, Mr Nice was selling about 1,000 copies a week. Its author was
reading to audiences of 50 or 60, who'd paid a few pounds each.

Then, in the autumn, the Shepherd's Bush Empire took a risk. Instead of
booking a band as usual, the theatre would buy space in the music press and
sell Marks instead. 'Come and meet him. You'll like him,' ran the publicity
line. In November, a thousand people did. By the end of the month, Mr Nice
was doing 2,300 copies a week, by the middle of December 3,300, by
Christmas 5,300. 'Charm sells books,' says Godwin. 'It sells and sells and
sells.' Last Friday at the Empire, there was a lady of 59 in the back row.
She had a tartan shawl over her shoulders and tucked-in, tidy hair. 'This
is not my cup of tea for an evening,' she said, as the techno hissed and
thumped from the interval sound system. 'I usually go to the West End to
see a good show.'

Marks, however, had her approval. For a start, his family had been
neighbours in Wales: 'They were more middle-class, we were more
working-class.' And he had made something of himself. 'He's an icon. It's
like going to see Tom Jones.' She glanced at the stage and the smoke
drifting to and fro. 'I've never taken the stuff myself. But all this is
very interesting. He's been involved with the IRA and he's been involved
with the Mafia ... I must read the book.' Marks and his agents have plans
for further products. The BBC is working on a four-part 'drama-documentary'
based on Mr Nice. There is a feature film coming. Marks's publisher talks
about 'different markets'; Godwin wants him to go to Australia, then write
a history of marijuana and a film script about a fictional drugs scam.

Marks, meanwhile, wants to be what his young fans most admire: a DJ. He
tried it at after-show parties for the Super Furry Animals. Then he remixed
one of their singles last year, another tribute to him called The Man Don't
Give A Fuck. It was their biggest hit (number 16). He has started getting
bookings: this Friday he is playing at The Kitchen, a club night in
Norwich.

Marks sees only one problem: 'I have no musical talent.' He smiles and the
middle-aged sag in his cheeks disappears. Self-deprecation is another
talent. The success of Mr Nice 'astonished' him; it will, he says, acting
the Oxford man again for a moment, 'necessarily be a transient interest'.

This is probably wise. There is a certain risk, after all, in being a man
past 50 who tells magazines he likes speed garage. And being a senior
hipster could get boring: 'If it came to be something I just trotted out
for a bag of money ... I hope. . .' He laughs, 'I'd make the right
decision. I don't want to be rubbing shoulders with Richard Branson.' For
all Marks's stories and his links to dangerous and mysterious persons, he
is a mild kind of ex-criminal. He knows it, of course. 'There's a certain
respectability in my brand of anti-establishmentarianism,' he says
smoothly. And, in a way, he is quite old-fashioned, with his gentleman's
adventures abroad and his profits from a public appetite for minor
naughtiness, or at least for the retelling of it.

The Shepherd's Bush Empire was a safe, slightly smug place last week, warm
with the laughter of mutual recognition. The real modern drug-taking was
probably going on outside: on the grey estates, in the fine white terraces,
without jokes or showing-off or any sense that it was out of the ordinary.
Were Howard Marks to get bored of spin-offs, or were his cannabis campaign
to make progress, he would not be short of customers.