The Midnight Rambler // Alfred Spellman

Richards boasts that he used to walk down Oxford Street openly carrying ‘a slab of hash as big as a skateboard’ and it did not even occur to him that this might be illegal in the lax attitude of the Sixties.

After decades indulging in what he calls the ‘breakfast of champions’ – a cocktail of heroin and cocaine – he claims he has finally given up hard drugs.

But having quit heroin in 1978, it was not until 2006 that he kicked the cocaine habit after plunging from a coconut tree in Fiji and undergoing life-saving brain surgery, including having a metal plate fitted to his skull.

He admits: ‘Yeah – that was cocaine I had to give up for that. You’re like, “I’ve got the message, oh Lord”.’