AS a 19-year-old nuclear physics student at Oxford University, Howard Marks sampled cannabis for the first time. A quite normal step for a student, but this moment was more significant than any like it before, as Marks took his first step towards building one of the biggest drugs empires that the world has ever seen.

His one time dream to "make the biggest dope deal in the world" has since made way for two other ambitions - the legalisation of cannabis and the success of his new record label, Bothered, and the bands it has signed.

At home in Majorca, 55-year-old Marks reflects on his criminal past with no regrets. Perhaps this is a result of serving less than six years in prison, despite being sentenced to 25 years by a Miami court, for racketeering.

Alternatively, it could be the fact that the court fined him some $200,000 dollars, while his illegal operations are estimated in the region of tens of millions of pounds.

"It must be a quantum leap," he jokes when quizzed on the jump from his student life to his status as an international most-wanted figure. As he explains in his still-strong Welsh drawl, it started "just by smoking it and then by buying more than I could smoke - it grew very greatly over a rather long period of time, just getting bigger and bigger."

For 20 years, he shipped around £1bn worth of cannabis into Britain and America, with one consignment alone said to be worth in the riegion of £14m. Estimates as to the scale of the business have varied from £30m to £100m, solely on cannabis.

"I've taken other drugs, but that's the only drug I've ever dealt with. There is a moral reason, I wouldn't be happy trading in anything that had a potential for harm, whether it's legal or illegal," he says.

Marks realised his wealth "when I was counting it", but won't offer an accurate figure himself. "I was trying to make as much money as possible, trying to make the biggest dope deal in the world."

Although he dismisses the £100m figure, Marks admits: "It wasn't for the lack of trying." And, having got off very lightly with his reduced prison sentence, he has no regrets about the 20 years in which he had "several hundred" employees working for the bogus firms he set up as a cover for his real work.

"The main ones were travel agencies, wine importation, import, export, publishing, recording studio, bar, restaurant. The usual stuff, pretty much anything you could think of. They all lost money at the expense of the dope business, but they helped cover it. There were no legitimate businesses," he says.

As well as the 25 sham businesses, Marks had 43 identities ("that I can remember"), including the alias Donald Nice, from which his nickname and the title of his autobiography Mr Nice comes, and about the same number of false passports. He was eventually busted at his Majorca home during a "joint American-Spanish operation". Extradition laws saw him transferred to Florida to be brought to justice.

It was around 15 years earlier that he realised the police were after him and his notoriety hit home. Standing in a London newsagents' in 1974, he glanced at the front page of the Daily Mirror and saw his own face looking back at him.

"I just went to Italy," he says. He hid away for a couple of weeks until he could change his appearance enough to get out of the country with a false passport. "It's not hard, you just have to grow a moustache, put a pair of glasses on. People can rarely recognise you from a photograph."

The papers had labelled him "the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time" and his smuggling network had allegedly become responsible for the majority of marijuana smoked in the Western world throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Almost resigned to a very long stretch, Marks did not expect to be released as soon as he did, despite his model inmate behaviour.

"It was a hell of a surprise. They reduced the sentence on the past convictions process and I got maximum parole," he says. "I behaved myself inside."

Bizarrely, Marks says one of his few legitimate jobs was for Her Majesty's Secret Service, MI6, and, although his criminal activity was never mentioned, he figures the Military Intelligence must have been good enough to have an idea of his operations. "I was recruited through old Oxford contacts," he explains, saying little other than that he was asked to spy on the IRA.

Even now, on the straight and narrow, Marks makes no bones about the fact that he is always looking to make money, in his writing mostly.

"I'm writing a lot, but I only write a lot when I'm given an advance to do so." At the moment, he's working on an anthology of drugs stories, some his own, most from other sources.

Scattered among this, in Britain and across Europe, are his live performances - "just me getting on stage, talking a lot, answering questions, playing some music and showing films".

Although his average audience member would be "someone in his 20s who smokes dope", Marks believes there are often off-duty police officers in the crowds, who are keen to see his show. "Often they come along without advertising it, just as a paying punter."

Mr Nice has sold more than 420,000 copies in the UK alone and has been translated into German, Hebrew, Spanish and French. The live shows started in December 1997, as readings from the book.

"It started for me as a result of doing readings from my book at various locations, beginning at bookshops and then going on to clubs. Then I was meeting musicians and sharing the stages, things like that.

"Some of the bands started writing songs about me and my voice, so we decided to start a label to bring together other bands who weren't so well known."

Super Furry Animals were the first band Marks heard had written about his life, and he admits: "I was absolutely astonished - very honoured but absolutely gobsmacked."

Along with the likes of Shaun Ryder, the Levellers and the Stereophonics, Super Furry Animals feature on Marks' first album release as a music industry boss, Under the Influence.

When asked to tip an unknown band for stardom, he names Parker, an outfit from New Zealand. "My hopes for the label are that it's successful for everyone concerned with it," he says. "The bands thoroughly deserve a career in the music industry"