FREDDIE TO TACKLE THE BAD GUYS

He plans to do his research first-hand and is putting out feelers in the murky milieu of cocaine traffickers.

“I’m hoping to talk to what you might call friends in low places. These are out-and-out gangsters, really dangerous people,” he confided at the London launch of scriptwriter and novelist Julian Fellowes’ book Past Imperfect at Cadogan Hall.

“But I find that being a writer truly does open doors.”

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The 70-year-old Day Of The Jackal author plans to build on techniques he honed for his previous novel Icon, set among the Russian mafia.

“My friends all thought then that it was simply too violent a scene and that these hoods would close ranks but when they heard I was a writer they really let me in with open arms over vodka shots,” Freddie said at the bash, attended by Princess
Michael of Kent, Lord Freddie Windsor and Tory grandees Michael Howard and Lord Ancram.

“I’m hoping things may work my way again with the Cocaleros, or cocaine dealers of Bogota, and that they’ll grant me access,” he says, adding darkly: “If I come back in a box, they didn’t!”