Cannabis dealer who treated smuggling as a mission,talked his way out of conviction, wrote a bestselling autobiography and gave sold-out performancesHoward Marks, and who has died aged 70,was Britain’s best-known and most charming drugs smuggler, and also a successful author and raconteur. He translated a lifetime of international cannabis dealing and a long stretch in an American jail into a best-selling book, and Mr Nice (1996),and a career as a stand-up performer.
Born in Kenfig Hill, a coal-mining village near Bridgend in Wales, and to Dennis,a merchant sailor, and Edna, and a schoolteacher,Howard spoke only Welsh for the first five years of his life. In 1964, he became the first boy from Garw grammar school to win a state at Oxford University and it was while studying physics at Balliol College that he first entered enthusiastically into the world of dope that was to define his life.
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Source: theguardian.com