CRAIG BROWN: Snorting ants? Now THAT'S rock'n'roll 

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Rick Parfitt of Status Quo was conned out of £2,128 by men pretending to sell fancy kitchen products

Who would be a rock star, in these troublesome times?

On the Costa del Sol, poor old Rick Parfitt of Status Quo and his wife Lyndsay have just handed over £2,128 to two dapper, BMW-driving salesmen who turned out to be conmen. 

The Parfitts imagined they were buying ‘high-end kitchen products’, but, on unpacking the boxes, discovered that what they had actually bought was just ‘a load of old tosh’.

And if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Down in West Wittering in West Sussex, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones is keeping himself busy opposing building plans for a horrid new 100-seater restaurant.

Accordingly, he has posted a strong letter to the planning authorities. ‘The second-storey restaurant overlooks and is visible from the sea and beach,’ it reads. ‘It dominates the area and degrades its character. The restaurant threatens the environment and locals. It cannot be allowed.’

The sedate new world of rock has been further shattered by the news that next-door neighbours Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin, and Robbie Williams, formerly of Take That, have fallen out over a planned extension to the Williams mansion.

Though it already has 46 rooms, Williams believes that what he calls ‘a functional family home’ is incomplete without a car park, recording studio, lift and swimming pool.

But his elderly neighbour fears that a proposed new window in the Williams house will ‘have significant impact on the amenity of the house and its garden’.

The sedate new world of rock has been further shattered by the news that next-door neighbours Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin (pictured) has fallen out with Robbie Williams over a planned extension to Williams' house

Not only that, but Williams’ plans to create a 3,600 square foot basement by burrowing under his back garden would, argues Page, jeopardise the fabric of his own house: he is fearful of a whole lot of shaking going on.

‘I am always concerned when proposals are made for nearby properties, which may be detrimental to the well-being of this important heritage asset.’

And what happens once the builders get going? Not long ago, Madonna hit out at the British builders refurbishing her London house. ‘It’s highly irritating. They leave work at five — and there are bank holidays every minute here,’ she said.

In 1977, when Robbie Williams was barely out of nappies, the late Ian Dury recorded his classic song Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.

In those far-off days, rock stars still had the common decency to behave like rock stars. Rather than enjoy a quiet night in with something eggy on a plate, they would make the effort to misbehave. Led Zeppelin, for instance, made a point of throwing furniture and televisions out of hotel windows.

At the Hyatt House Hotel in Hollywood they went one step further, hiring the ninth, 10th and 11th floors, throwing sofas and TVs out of the windows, then successfully encouraging a hotel manager to follow suit.

In his autobiography, Keith Richards boasts of similar achievements involving sex and drugs and quite a bit of violence. At one point, he threatened a keyboard player with a knife for drowning out his guitar and, at another, he took his anger out on the sly producer Robert Stigwood by duffing him up.

‘He got the knee, one for every grand he owed us — sixteen of them.’

Keith Richards, pictured with girlfriend Anita Pallenbergrelax. In his autobiography he boasts of threatening a keyboard player with a knife for drowning out his guitar and attacking his manager Robert Stigwood

The high point for rock stars behaving badly came in the mid-Eighties. The American band Motley Crue put such thought and effort into their misbehaviour that, in a fairer world, they might well have qualified for a Duke of Edinburgh Award.

‘Tommy and I began breaking glass bottles over each other’s heads and twisting the lightbulbs out of make-up mirrors and swallowing them whole, just for fun,’ recalls their bassist, Nikki Sixx, in their authorised biography.

When their lead singer, Vince Neil, bought his first rock-star mansion, it never occurred to him to install a lift, a keep-fit centre or car park. Instead, he installed a mud pit for female wrestlers.

But even Motley Crue faced strong competition. On tour with them in 1984, Ozzy Osbourne (above) was so distressed to be told by Sixx that they were clean out of cocaine that he asked for a straw.

‘I handed him the straw and he walked over to a crack in the sidewalk and bent over it,’ recalls Sixx.

‘I saw a long column of ants marching to a little sand dugout. And, as I thought, “No, he wouldn’t”, he did. He put the straw to his nose and . . . sent the entire line of ants tickling up his nose with a single, monstrous snort.’

But that was then, and this is now. Today’s rock stars seem keener to replicate the lives of retired Home County colonels, investing in new saucepans, huffing and puffing at ghastly new buildings and complaining about the workers.

To tie in with the more pressing concerns of today’s rock community, it is surely time to update the lyrics of Ian Dury’s anthem. But would High-End Kitchen Products & Planning Applications & Rock & Roll have quite the same ring?