Fear and loathing in Raymond's Revue Bar

I first met Hunter S. Thompson in 1974 in Kinshasha, Zaire, the unlikely venue for the Ali/Foreman 'Rumble in the Jungle'. As the notorious Editor-at-Large for Rolling Stone, Thompson was at the peak of his Gonzo fame, towering head and shoulders (literally) above the assembled world's press; I was a struggling author attempting to put together a biography of Ali on a shoestring.

Normally we wouldn't have had much chance of coming into contact - he was staying at the Hilton; I was in a flea pit - but a week before the bout George Foreman ran into his sparring partner's elbow and the fight was postponed for six weeks.

Instantly all the real newspapermen de-camped (Kinshasha was no Club Med), except for a few literary heavyweights on big expenses and no daily deadline (Norman Mailer, Bud Schulberg, Thompson) and those who couldn't afford another return ticket (me). So we started hanging out together - Norman and Bud and Hunter and... me.

At the end of each session Hunter would call for the bill, write down a room number at random, sign something indecipherable with a flourish and stride off cackling

They would play poker into the early hours at the Hilton Casino and I would watch. Each afternoon we would lounge around the Hilton pool drinking and smoking copious amounts of Zaire weed; at the end of each session Hunter would call for the bill, write down a room number at random, sign something indecipherable with a flourish and stride off cackling.

On fight night Hunter, grinning maniacally, commandeered a hotel car, crammed us all in, and set off into the dark the wrong way on the city's only four-lane highway, an error he rectified by ploughing across the divider and fishtailing back towards the stadium at full speed. After that, the fight was something of a letdown.

I last saw him a few days later at the airport, trying to talk himself and a huge elephant tusk onto the flight back to America. He didn't write a line for Rolling Stone. I should have been warned.

Eight years later, now the editor of Time Out, I had the genius idea of inviting Hunter to London to review a play - Where the Buffalo Roams - about him. Great idea, agreed Ralph Steadman, his illustrator. "I've been trying to get him to write the words for our new book. Perhaps it'll be easier to force him to do it over here."

Hunter readily agreed, even waiving the fee. "Just put us up at the Savoy for a few nights," he said airily.

At the usual 4am I got a phone call, this time from my journalist. Hunter had stolen his tape recorder and wouldn’t give it back

He arrived with his current girlfriend, a diminutive American rottweiler from whom he was clearly trying to escape - and did at every waking moment. From there on it was a descent into Gonzo madness, a blurred week of drink and drugs and sobbing women and 4am rescuing from other women's beds and more drink and more drugs. And no copy. Not the merest hint of a word.

As a (very) last resort I persuaded Hunter to allow one of our journalists to accompany him on one of his all-night binges to write a 'Hunter Thompson's London' type piece. At the usual 4am I got a phone call, this time from my journalist. Hunter had stolen his tape recorder and wouldn't give it back. I met them in the foyer of Raymond's Revue Bar, where, after much circular discussion Hunter, eyes revolving like wind farms, agreed to give back the tape if I agreed to pay his Savoy bar bill. I said yes and went home to bed, exhausted. Hunter carried on.

The airline he came on went bust, so we were out another return ticket. The Savoy bar bill probably cost more than the play. The tape was gibberish. Ralph Steadman kindly wrote the article. All I got from Hunter was a signed copy to my wife of my well-thumbed paperback copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, reading "To Sue Ready - God's mercy on yr poor ass for being mixed up with that cheap bastard Don Atyeo." Cheap at the price, really.
'Gonzo' is showing at the London Film Festival on October 27 and 28