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Mr Nice admits he was stoned on 'Late Late'

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By Olaf Tyaransen
Sunday Jun 19 2011

Former cannabis smuggler Howard Marks has revealed that he was "stoned" and his fellow guest, Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, was drunk when they appeared on The Late Late Show last December.

"We were both drunk as f***," Marks admits, with a laugh. "I was definitely stoned. I don't think Rhys was, because he doesn't smoke. But we were drunk, yes. And I was nervous as hell -- I thought Rhys was gonna be a lot worse than he was. I hate to see people f******g themselves up or shooting themselves in the foot, and I thought he was in danger of doing it. But he didn't," says the 65-year-old convicted drug smuggler.

Although he's already released three non-fiction books, the Welsh man has just published his debut novel, Sympathy for the Devil.

A talk-show veteran at this stage, Marks has appeared on the Late Late with all three of its most recent hosts since his release from prison in 1995.

"I didn't think much of Ryan Tubridy that night," he says. "I didn't think he was very good. I would've preferred Gay Byrne, to be honest. There was a guy between the two of them, wasn't there? Pat Kenny? Yeah, I didn't think that much of him, either. Gay was wonderfully well-mannered. I really liked him."

The impaired pair were on the show to promote the movie adaptation of Howard's bestselling autobiography, Mr Nice. Was he happy with Ifans' on-screen portrayal of him?

"I was very happy indeed. A lot of people criticised it for leaving a lot out, but you have to leave a lot out in a feature-length movie. And when you do start leaving chunks out then you've got to connect them all together with fictional shortcuts. If I look at any scene in the movie, it actually didn't happen like that.

"But making a movie is such a different discipline to writing a book."

He does, however, have one regret about the movie. "I sold the film rights for Mr Nice way too soon. I basically took the first offer that came along. That was before I realised it was gonna be a bestseller. I honestly thought the book would only appeal to a relatively small audience of ageing stoners. So this time round, I haven't sold the film rights."

Set in his native Wales, Sympathy for the Devil is a fast-paced thriller featuring suicidal rock stars, corrupt cops, serial killers and lots of sex and drugs. He wrote most of it on the road, travelling between performances of his acclaimed one-man show, An Audience With Mr Nice.

Having spent much of his life engaged in criminality, he says he didn't need to do a lot of research into the mentalities of cops and robbers.

"I did very little by way of reading contemporary crime novels either," he says. "I consulted a few crime writers and I actually only remember one sort of phrase of advice.

"Somebody told me that a 'whodunit' is like a chess game between the author and the reader, and if the reader guesses whodunit then the author has definitely lost."

Trading off a notorious criminal reputation for profit can occasionally have its downsides. He was deported from Hong Kong when trying to enter China, Australia won't give him a visa and he can't get into America.

"Then again, I didn't want to go last time. On my last flight to the US I was wearing handcuffs!"

- Olaf Tyaransen

Originally published in