Introducing... Howard Marks, legendary former drug baron and now York resident.

Howard Marks, Welsh mining village boy and Oxford nuclear physics student, was "the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time" (Daily Mirror). Using 43 aliases and 25 companies, his international smuggling empire allegedly provided nearly all of the marijuana smoked in the western world in the 1970s and '80s. Once an agent for MI6 and dealer to American CIA members, he now writes for the Observer, Time Out and The Times and is on the road with his latest stand-up show, Mr Nice. His writing HQ is a flat in York, as late-arriving Charles Hutchinson discovers.

How do you react when someone is late for an appointment?

"If it's just a cup of coffee in City Screen, like now, then fine, but if it was a delivery of hash, then that was a problem."

How have you ended up being based in York?

"I came here initially for sad reasons in February 2002. My mother was dying in the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton; she'd been staying with my sister in Richmond for a couple of weeks and had fallen and had a brain haemorrhage, and I took a place in York to be close to her.

"It's one of the flats in Piccadilly Plaza, and despite the bad association with my mother's death, I grew to like the place and have kept it on. I treat it as a writer's garret... though that's a romantic description. It's almost like a student flat."

What do you like about living in York?

"Its 'manageability' is a huge attraction. The fact you can walk out and the bank and the shops are within easy walking distance; it's like being in my Welsh childhood village, Kenfig Hill. I also like walking the ancient walls, just thinking vaguely historical thoughts. The train service to London is only two hours, and Leeds-Bradford Airport is close by."

London, airports, thoughts of travel: do you consider York to be your adopted home now or are you by nature a restless rambling man?

"I'm probably more often away from here than here, but I'm here more often than I am anywhere else! I keep travelling because there's a nomadic instinct in me that will never leave me."

You are putting that urge to keep moving to good effect in your writing.

"I've been doing quite a lot of travel writing for the Observer and some other magazines. I can't really carry on writing about drugs; I have to think about my old-age pension, as we all do, and I really enjoy travelling, as we all do.

"My most recent piece was on Vietnam and that was published in July, and my next visit is to Argentina in January for The Observer. That's a new trip for SAGA for the over-55s... and I'm well over 50. In fact you couldn't get more over 50 than I am now: I'm 59."

Random House has commissioned a Bill Bryson-style travel book from you on South America. What will it feature?

"A lot of it's about Patagonia. Apparently the last interesting thing that happened there was the Ice Age, but it does have a Welsh-speaking community."

Tonight, you are presenting your latest show, Mr Nice, at the Grand Opera House, York. How does it differ from earlier shows, such as An Audience With Mr Nice?

"The last time I did the show in York I did extracts from the Mr Nice book. This year, there'll be nothing from Mr Nice but stories modified from my second book, Dope Stories, and there'll be a lot more use of multi-media than before, as it's so much easier to make your own DVDs now and you can do much more with footage and pictures than with mere description."

What dope stories will you be telling?

"I won't be concentrating so much on marijuana as on other drugs, not the technical side of them but more about the bizarre drugs that are used in certain parts of the world..."

...Such as?

"The urine of reindeer is drunk by the Chuchki tribe in Northern Siberia. The reindeer eat quite toxic fungae - magic mushrooms - which if you or I were to eat them, we would die, but once they've passed through the reindeer's alimentary canal, they're not toxic anymore.

"Obviously the customs officials didn't believe it when I tried to bring some bottles through customs, so they analysed them... and I've done lots of serious research too, looking at the indolic chemical structure. Did you know it's present in the urine of schizophrenics as well as in LSD, mescaline and psychedelic mushrooms?"

Have you had any disappointing drug experiences?

"In Sudan, they boil the liver of the giraffe, the humr, and then drink the stock and hallucinate, but when I took it, probably through the power of suggestion, all I could see was a lot of giraffes."

Finally, Howard, can you get decent dope in York, and if so, where?

"Yes you can. Any club or bar where there are young people, you'll get it there."

Mr Nice, Howard Marks, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 7.30pm. Tickets: £13.50 on 0870 606 3595

Updated: 09:32 Friday, November 19, 2004