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The first time I noticed George W Bush," Hunter Thompson tells me, "was when he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a guy who had come to sell..." Thompson, sitting at his desk in a faded-green dressing-gown, stares down at a plate of untouched food: Danish pastries which were warm half an hour ago, smothered in red jam and melted ice-cream.
"Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes."
"I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub," Thompson adds, "then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away."
"I have a friend who was with George W Bush at Yale," Thompson recalls. "Bush branded him with a red-hot coat hanger."
"Why?"
"Some fraternity thing. He still has the scar. (The victim, a respected television journalist, later confirms this story. he was the one in charge of the ceremony. I was on the front page of Yale News.")
"It is just incredible to me," Thompson goes on, taking a slug of Glenfiddich, "that Bush ever got into Yale. Well, actually, it isn't. Some are enrolled at birth, practically. He was one. There will be others. He is an average farm hand."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/hunter-s-thompson-more-fear-and-loathing-on-the-campaign-trail-31028.html