Spend an Evening with Mr Nice

Described by the Daily Mail as the most sophisticated marijuana drugs baron of all time, Howard Marks is one of the most notorious - and likeable - drug smugglers you're ever likely to meet.

Jayne Robinson

Date published: 6th May 2011

Described by the Daily Mail as the most sophisticated marijuana drugs baron of all time, Howard Marks is one of the most notorious - and likeable - drug smugglers you're ever likely to meet.

During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks - or Mr Nice as he's become known - had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines, and twenty five companies trading throughout the world. Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing.

Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford and was soon moving large quantities of hashish into Europe and America 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 and had contact with organisations as diverse as the CIA, MI6, the IRA, and the Mafia.

After many years and a world-wide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty five years in prison at the United States Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of America's only Federal Death Row. He was released on parole in April 1995 after serving seven years of his sentence.

Now using his charm and appealing personality in another - more legal - way, Howard has become one of the UK's most in demand public speakers, enthralling audiences everywhere with his fascinating and often hilarious stories of his time spent smuggling majijuana around the world.

Spend An Evening With Mr Nice in either Liverpool or Manchester next week, on the following dates:

Liverpool: An Evening with Mr Nice at Mojo, Tues 17th May

Tickets for An Evening with Mr Nice in Liverpool 

Manchester: An Evening with Mr Nice at Black Dog Ballroom, Weds 18th May

Tickets for An Evening with Mr Nice in Manchester

Find out more about Howard Marks at his Skiddle artist page