Want to make a million? Be careful...
At 35, I was a struggling travel writer with five guides in print but not enough money to pay the rent. Then I met the Colonel in India.
"You should try business, Joe!" said the Colonel. "It would be a most spiritual experience!"
Spiritual or not, he was right. Five years on, I was the foremost wholesaler of hippy-Hindi glad rags in the UK. But at what cost? Along the way, I lost my hair, my house, my girlfriend, my Buddhist principles, and very nearly my sanity.
The problem was my business partner, Spud. A borderline psycho with just one aim in mind – to become a rupee millionaire. With a million, he believed, people would forget he was a small fat plumber from Peckham and women would flock to his cash and shag him senseless.
But then, as he devolved into craziness and his dreams of world domination began to fall apart, he found a new reason for living.
He wanted me dead.