Mark Beaumont (journalist)

In April 2007, Beaumont found himself at the centre of a media storm when NME magazine published his now-infamous interview with Keith Richards. Beaumont had asked Richards what the strangest thing he had ever snorted was,[7] and quoted him as replying:

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.[8]

Amid the media uproar that followed, Richards' manager claimed the remark had been made in jest,[9] but Beaumont told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that he believed Richards had been telling the truth, adding that "He did seem to be quite honest about it. There were too many details for him to be making it up".[10] He later told Uncut magazine that the interview had been conducted by telephone and that he had misquoted Richards at one point (reporting that Richards had said he listens to Motörhead, when what he had said was Mozart), but that he still believed the veracity of the ash-snorting anecdote.[7] Richards later confirmed in an interview with Mojo magazine that he had, in fact, snorted his father's ashes - with no cocaine mixed in - before burying them under an oak tree: "I said I'd chopped him up like cocaine, not with."[11]