Sligo Events

Mr Nice for the Hawk’s Well Theatre

Howard Marks for the Hawk's Well Theatre Sligo

From infamous drug runner to celebrated author, Howard Marks presents his legendary one man comedy show. Join him as he recounts how as an Oxford student he graduated to hash smuggling, being recruited by the MI6 and to eventual imprisonment in the USA’s most hard core prison, Terre Haute.

During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and 25 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. The academic life began to lose its allure.

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.

Tonight he talks about his experience and reads from his books Mr Nice, Senore Nice and Dope Stories. There will also be the chance for you to put your questions to him in a special Q&A session.

Howard Marks//The Hawk’s Well Theatre//Fri 29th January//8pm//€15