THE SMACK AND THE FIDDLE

Music autobiographies can be a hit and miss affair. For every David Lee Roth and his revelations about sexing up dwarves, there are ten Ronan Keatings bleating on about their favourite shade of beige, so it's refreshing to see that Ronnie Wood doesn't appear to be shying away from detailing his ingestion of heroic amounts of drugs in the past.

Ronnie, half Cherokee Indian, half Woody Woodpecker has called his upcoming book 'Ronnie' (what else?) and has taken the opportunity to show that he's not the only Rolling Stone who didn't know what year it was, never mind what day.

"It got to the point where I would be on my hands and knees looking for crumbs that might have fallen out of the pipe. I even banned my children eating meringues in the house after I ended up smoking sugar, believing it to be cocaine." Now that's hardcore, but the best is yet to come...

"I convinced my insurance company to let me have a $70,000 home improvement loan. When I received the cheque, I put Tarmac down on a new driveway, painted the kitchen green, and spent the rest on dope in just six weeks."   

Excellent work, sir! Still, Keith Richards would've done better though - he'd have smoked the claim form and mainlined the ink right out of the pen.