Writer, performer and former drug smuggler dies at 70

Writer, performer and former drug smuggler Howard Marks dies at aged 70, after suffering from cancer.

Marks, known to many as Mr Nice, was a “true modern-day folk hero”, who had done “so many funny, shocking, illegal things”, his friend and former colleague James Brown – the creator and founder of Loaded magazine – told the Guardian.

Marks was described as a “truly lovely, entertaining and inspiring man” as news of his death broke on Twitter.

Marks was born in 1945 near Bridgend, in Wales. He was educated at the University of Oxford and turned his hand to cannabis smuggling. After being caught by US authorities in 1988, he was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment in the Terre Haute federal penitentiary – “America’s toughest”, he claimed.

He was released on parole in 1995, having served seven years.

He first came to the public’s attention when he published a bestselling memoir in 1996, the year after his release from a US prison, where he had been incarcerated for drug offences.

He recalled his exploits in a best-selling autobiography, Mr Nice, which was later made into a film starring Rhys Ifans.

As well as the film version of Mr Nice, Marks had cameo roles in the movie Human Traffic and appeared on TV including on the BBC quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

A sequel to Mr Nice, Senor Nice, came out in 2006, and five years later Marks published a crime novel, Sympathy for the Devil.

READ: 'To Kill a Mockingbird author' dies at 89