Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

While Fleet Street's finest clamour for an interview, Ronnie Wood tells all to the 'FT'

The pink paper pips the red tops with its unlikely scoop on the Stone's latest exploits

Jonathan Owen
Sunday 20 July 2008 00:00 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

A week or so ago, word went round medialand that Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood,61, was entangled with a 19-year-old Russian cocktail waitress. Suddenly, the rocker's London home was laid siege by tabloid reporters. Sad – or not – to say, they never cornered him.

How galling, then, for them to discover yesterday that he had, at the tabloids' moment of greatest need, been secure in the custody of that well-known scandal sheet The Financial Times. We know this because the FT's interview was published yesterday, and what a welter of confessions the pink paper wrung from him: that it took a "17-year apprenticeship" to be accepted wholly by the Stones ("Charlie and Bill stood up for me"); Lucian Freud loves his landscape paintings; and that Tracey Emin is a friend ("She's like my aunt").

And then, of course, there's his famed drinking. He'd been up drinking all of the night before (not a normal confession for FT interview subjects); there were 20 pubs within a square mile of his Dublin home; and "sometimes I get so bored I think I'll have a drink. I don't mean any harm but I just go off the rails." He was, apparently, trained for it, telling how, when his childhood home's lawn was dug up, 1,700 Guinness bottles were discovered buried under it.

Then, as talk turns to Wood's latest art exhibition, his "Little Red Rooster" ringtone goes off.

"He seems agitated," writes the interviewer. "The call brings news," he says, "of the Sun door-stepping his home in Kingston, south-west London."

The FT, unpractised at lowering the tone in its interviews, does not press for further, unseemly details. But, adds the paper's man: "A few days after our lunch, I realise that he had been given news that the paper was about to write a story about how during the week of our meeting, he was holed up with a young Russian waitress." Timing, as they say, is everything.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in