Rolling Stone gathers no ash

Perhaps you've heard the (latest) bizarre story regarding Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards?

Richards was recently quoted in an interview with the pop music magazine NME as claiming that he had snorted the ashes of his father, Bert, who died in 2002. In response to the question "what's the strangest thing you've ever tried to snort?", Richards replied:

"My father. I snorted my father. 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 shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

But the real story here is that it was later claimed the comments were an April Fools' joke. Frankly, I'm not so sure; would anyone seriously be that surprised if it were true?

Meanwhile, executives at Walt Disney Studios have decided that Richards is apparently too unpredictable to promote the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End", in which the rocker makes a cameo appearance alongside Johnny Depp as the father of Captain Jack Sparrow. A Disney vice president said, "When I heard the ashes story, I thought, 'How are we going to spin this?'"

"Keith won't be doing a lot of publicity for this movie."

God, I love show biz.