It is hard to avoid puns when reviewing Howard Marks. The drug dealer-turned-author nearly made a hash of his gig by leaving his script in his dressing room. After a hugely entertaining saunter through his early highs - working-class Welsh lad attends Oxford, sells cannabis, gets rich - he wanted to read a piece about links between drugs and terrorism, but his Awol script prompted some emergency ad-libbing.
Eventually a factotum delivered some papers to the stage, at which point Marks, resembling a cross between Keith Richards and Rip Van Winkle, thrust a hand in his back pocket and discovered he had secreted his original draft there. This shambolic incident might have been unscheduled but it added to the fun. If you are going to deliver a two-hour paean to pot, it is fitting that things don't run with military precision.
In the end, his extended anecdote about smuggling grass into Ireland using the same routes as gunrunners was not quite worth the build-up. Marks is much more comfortable with the intimacy of less rigorously structured yarns.
There is an engaging self-deprecating air to the way he casually describes his career: "I'm a failed dope dealer. I got caught." He is a pharmaceutical Robin Hood: while others traded hard drugs, he claims he only peddled marijuana, making him a relatively good guy in an evil business. Hence the disingenuous nickname of Mr Nice. Memories of his spell in a brutal Indiana penitentiary alongside murderers strip away some of the glamour of his profession, but if there is such a thing as a cuddly ex-trafficker, it is Marks.
The show climaxed with him sporting a fez and discussing the legalisation of cannabis. A stoned simpleton could guess which side of the fence this narcotic Tommy Cooper is on. Marks's latest dopey book, 101 Uses of a Dead Roach, is co-written by the author of 101 Uses of a Dead Cat. Call it a joint effort. Onstage Marks is an unfiltered solo apologist, smoking out hypocrisy with languid ease.
Showing until 26 November, Shepherds Bush Empire; 29 November, Astoria. Tickets: 020 7344 0044.
