Hunter S. Thompson

It was bound to happen, but you have to think "what a waste." I played a newspaper reporter in the Del Toro/Depp film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas shot at the old Ambassador Hotel in 1998. It was the smokiest mess I've ever been involved with but still kind of cool. I thought Depp was miscast, but then his check was much larger than mine. I've never seen the film.

From Thompson's latest

"Gore got mugged... the old man (G.HW.Bush)was the real tip-off. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's."

"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he said:

So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody.

But instead it seemed to have great appeal - the magazine was inundated with letters praising the article and it was hailed as "a breakthrough in journalism". Thompson compared his experience of the resulting furore as "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids".

From The Independent, by far the best coverage of Thompson's demise. Suffering from the aftermath spinal surgery and a fractured leg.