I nearly killed a family as I pulled up to Woody Creek, Colorado. The memory still brings me out in a sweat. I had driven from Salt Lake City, a journey of seven hours, and at the last I’d missed a stop, U-turned, and started driving on the wrong side of the road. The SUV coming the other way skidded round me and avoided the edge of a ravine by a wheel’s breadth. The young mother driving had been righteously furious. It was 1993 and I was 23.

I was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala SuperSport, with a huge V8 engine under its long bonnet. This was in some ways a tribute to the gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson. Over long dark nights on the farm in the Scottish Highlands where I was raised, I had devoured his tales from the 1972 presidential campaign, of running with the Hell’s Angels, of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

He sat at his bar and smoked grass from a human skull

Now I’d come to Hunter’s home town to free myself of his influence, as I’d come to understand this was a cliché among wannabe writers. I thought if I met him he’d be appalling and in one leap I’d be free. Of course, by nearly killing the mother with my whale-like car, I was still the cliché.

I haunted the Woody Creek Tavern, his famous hangout, and got to know the bartender by playing backgammon with her for money. And then, a few nights later there he was, in the corner, looking like Ralph Steadman’s cartoon version of himself, drinking a huge tumbler of booze and having his dinner.

I was introduced and, God help me, probably offered him the greetings of the people of Scotland. We got on. He liked that I was drifting. He told me to follow him back up to Owl Farm, his home, and we set up with more drinks in the kitchen. He sat at his bar behind a typewriter and smoked grass from a human skull.

It was a long night. He told stories, and read from unfinished manuscripts, including the then-unpublished novel The Rum Diary. And then, as dawn broke on the snow outside, he’d had enough. By this stage he was nursing a shotgun on his lap. He turned to his then-girlfriend Nicole and said: “This guy’s been in town for some time checking me out – maybe we ought to shoot him in the head.” I left.

I knew then, as I know now, that I got the HST show. If he was bored and the fan wasn’t too obnoxious, he’d put on an entertainment – it kept him from having to write. Whatever. I left the mountains with my admiration undimmed.