Keith Richards has gone through a lot this year. Not only did he plummet from a coconut tree/ trip over a little bush and end up getting his brain drilled, he's also watched Johnny Depp do an impression of him in an overlong film about pirates.
But every cloud has a silver lining, and so Keith Richards has come out of his skull surgery with a new lease of life and – more importantly – a slightly cleaner criminal record. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has just pardoned Keith Richards for a traffic offence that he picked up in a tiny Arkansas town. In 1975.
Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones have had a year so busy that it beggars belief. They've been censored during the Super Bowl, they've played China for the first time ever, they've played one of the largest concerts the world has ever seen and they've annoyed Noel Gallagher. And what have you done in the same amount of time? Blobbed away into a sweaty lump of cholesterol while prodding numbers into a spreadsheet, that's what. And you probably haven't fallen out of a tree and got your brain drilled either.
Keith Richards has, so he probably needs a bit of cheering up. And what better way could there possibly be of being cheered up than by having a fawning Governor of a smallish American state pardoning you for a traffic offence that you committed in 1975? So thank the good lord for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who's done exactly that. Back in 1975, Keith Richards was driving between shows in Memphis and Dallas when his car swerved on a road in the small town of Fordyce, and he was stopped and fined $162.20 for reckless driving as a result.
Although Keith Richards claimed that he lost control of the car while tuning in the radio, but police claimed that they could smell marijuana in the car, and Keith Richards was bundled off to jail with three other passengers. After Keith Richards was bailed and paid his fine by post, it was found that neither Keith Richards or his passengers were in possession or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
And now Mike Huckabee wants to do something about it. After meeting Keith Richards at a Rolling Stones concert earlier in the year and hearing his sorry tale, Huckabee decided to help him out with a pardon:
"I realised that his impression of our state was marred by a misdemeanor traffic stop. I wanted to clear his record in Arkansas as a goodwill gesture."
Anyone else in a similar situation as Keith Richards should probably write a nice long letter to Mike Huckabee, fold it up nice and small and push it up their arse, since they'd probably have to be as famous as Keith Richards to get a pardon.
Read more:
Governor to pardon Rolling Stones' Richards – Reuters
[story by Stuart Heritage]