Howard Marks

Nice.

Oh, yeah, the Howard Marks book.

Yeah, yes.

Well, Howard Marks and this other chap, he was part of that team.

And they saw themselves as sort of highwaymen, really, doing a good deed for everybody.

You know what I mean? Actually, they had a lot of fun.

But in fact, the seduction of, of the painterly overflowing tables, that, I mean, that abiding imagery.

I remember, uh, about 10 years later in the late '90s, I was in Palma in Majorca interviewing the international, uh, drug smuggler, Howard Marks, very charismatic fellow Welshman.

Uh, and he said, "Oh, Martin, you must come now to this restaurant with me in Palma.

It looks just like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover." And we go in there, and there were tables overflowing with fruit, and it was...

We're covering off the 90s, and one of the headlines that people always remember about the 90s was the huge rise of cocaine.

My good friend Howard Marks, I remember, he went down for about eight or nine years in American prison, and he said, echoing the poem we're going to hear in a second, that when he went to prison, rock stars... were doing cocaine.

And he said when he came out nine years later, which would have been in 1996, I think, because I went to see him that year in Parma and became lifelong friends.

He said, suddenly, everyone was doing it.

I think it was Mid Wales, maybe.

And, uh, I arrived in this car and this big country house and there was a sofa smoldering.

And I said, what's happened to the sofa? And the driver said, oh, that's Howard Marks.

He fell asleep with a joint in his hand and set the place on fire.