Keith Richards took gun to drug deals

Rock wildman Keith Richards was so terrified of being robbed during drug deals that he went to the meetings armed with a gun.

The Rolling Stones star was famously hooked on heroin and cocaine through some of the 1970s and 80s, and at the height of his drug use he was living with his wife Patti in New York.

Although he had several reliable and trusted sources to keep him supplied, occasionally a drug 'drought' would hit Manhattan and Richards would have to visit street dealers near his home on the Lower East Side - and he always took a gun with him for protection.

He tells The Sunday Times Magazine, "On the odd occasion there was a drought... We'd have to go down the East Side and carry a shooter. Just in case."

Richards eventually left Manhattan for a sprawling property in rural Connecticut, and he admits it was the births of his daughters Alexandra and Theodora that prompted him to finally quit his seedy life in New York in the mid-1980s.

He adds, "A year or two after they were born, I said, 'I can't bring the kids up on Fourth Street.' Not when there's fresh air and some countryside not far away."