"Many of his clients became friends, in particular Jeffrey Steiner, the billionaire head of the Fairchild Corporation, who had wandered into the original Pimlico Road shop one Saturday in 1988 and breezily dropped over £1 million. When staying at Steiner’s villa in the South of France, Hobbs claimed he was prevailed upon to supply a reefer to an elderly guest. The recipient collapsed after partaking and, it was assumed, had died. Panic ensued with Steiner insisting that the body be taken off his premises. But as Hobbs helped his host bundle the 'cadaver' into the boot of a car, it revived, to inquire, not unreasonably: 'What the hell do you [...]

"I think of myself as a fiction writer. I'm real interested in fiction, and all elements of fiction. Fiction's more important to me. So I'm also I think more scared and tense about fiction, more worried about my stuff, more worried about whether I'm any good or not, or I'm on the wrong track or not. Whereas the thing that was fun about a lot of the nonfiction is, you know, it's not that I didn't care, but it was just mostly like, yeah, I'll try this. I'm not an expert at it. I don't pretend to be. It's not particularly important to me whether the magazine, you know, even [...]