'Mr Nice', Howard Marks, to entertain at Strathpeffer

HOWARD MARKS, AKA Mr Nice, brings his new spoken-word show: ‘Scholar, Smuggler, Prisoner, Scribe’ to Strathpeffer Pavilion on Friday 2 May 2014.

With trademark honesty and penetrating humour, intrepid bon viveur and counter-culture icon Howard Marks will look back at four extraordinary and action packed phases of his life.

During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines and 25 companies trading through the world. Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity: cannabis dealing.

Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford University and was soon moving large quantities of hashish across the world in the equipment of touring rock bands. At the height of his career, he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada. Described by the Daily Mail as ‘the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time’, Howard Marks worked with the British Secret Service and has been connected with the Mafia, the IRA, MI6 and the CIA. He was given a 25-year sentence by the American Drug Enforcement Agency and imprisoned at America’s toughest federal penitentiary; Terre Haute, Indiana. He was released on parole in 1995 after serving seven years.

In 1996, Marks released his international best selling autobiography, Mr Nice. Since then, he has become a frequent column writer in major publications such as The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph. In 1997, Howard began his first live shows, all receiving excellent reviews throughout national press, and his now legendary one-man comedy show. In 2010, Mr Nice, a loose film adaptation of Howard’s cult autobiography was released. Directed by Bernard Rose and starring Rhys Ifans, the film received positive reviews from Empire, Time Out London and others.

Tickets are £15 and will go on sale on Friday 7 February at 9 am via www.strathpefferpavilion.org