Ladies and Gentlemen, Keith Richards

I'm used to hearing some great, outlandish quotes from Mr. Richards, of the Glimmer Twins. But the news that Keith snorted his own father's ashes (mixed with a little coke, of course) has set the bar anew. The man can do no wrong by me, even when he calls the new generation of British bands, "c***ts."

He is the embodiment of rock and roll excess. But Keith Richards' latest admission is likely to surprise even his most hardened fans.

The Rolling Stones guitarist has told how he snorted his own father's ashes in a drugs binge.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he said.

The 63-year-old detailed in a magazine interview how he mixed the
ashes with cocaine and inhaled them.

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Keith Richards has told how he snorted his own father's (right) ashes
in a drugs binge

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little
bit of blow.

"My dad wouldn't have cared - he didn't give a s***. It went down
pretty well. And I'm still alive."

Richards's father Bert died in 2002 aged 84. The news may not be met
with too much enthusiasm by Richards' mother Doris.

The star also recounted his worst drugs experience. "It was when
someone put strychnine in my dope," he said.

"It was in Switzerland. I was totally comatose but I was totally
awake.

"I could listen to everyone, and they were like, 'He's dead, he's
dead!', waving their fingers and pushing me about, and I was thinking,
'I'm not dead!'," he recalled.

He went on: "I've no pretensions about immortality - I'm the same as
everyone else - same as you, same as everybody, I'm the same old
b******, just kind of lucky.

"I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for ten years. I
mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list," he told
NME.

Richards added: "Some doctor told me I had six months to live and I
went to their funeral. The obit columns are of quite an interest to me
these days. I don't trust doctors.

"It's not to say there ain't some good ones, but on a general level,
no, I wouldn't trust 'em at all."

Richards predicted that Pete Doherty could be the next drugs casualty
- and told him to leave supermodel Kate Moss alone.

"My advice for Pete Doherty is that he should shut the f*** up and
leave her," he said. "I don't know the man. All I know is he's pushing
his luck and there it is, but so is Kate, who I know very well.

"Kate wants to play with bad boys, and she's done one, and then
another one, and then another one. Badabing, badabang, badaboom.
She'll live, the boys will die."

And he warned rock stars not to emulate his fabled drug-taking.

"I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it's a
way of life," he said.

Of today's musicians, he said: "Everyone's a load of c***. They're
trying to be somebody else and they ain't being themselves.
Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party? Load of c***, load of c***.
Posers, rubbish."

The Rolling Stones will kick off the European leg of their A Bigger
Bang tour in June.

Last year their touring was interrupted when Richards reportedly fell
out of a palm tree while on holiday in Fiji.

He said of the incident: "I wasn't climbing a tree. I was sitting on a
f***ing shrub. I was sitting on that shrub again today, but I happened
to fall off it the wrong way that day."

He had brain surgery after the accident and revealed: "I've been
trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my
brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

"I've got pictures of it, mate. They cut my head, brain, skull open,
went in and pulled out the c***, and put some of it back again.

"But that's the way it is. I mean, s*** , Keith Richards has got to do
everything once."

· The full interview appears in the new issue of NME, out today.