'I DID snort my Dad's ashes...but only a little bit,' admits Rolling Stones' Keith Richards

First he said he did, then he said he didn't, now Keith Richards has confessed that he actually did snort his father's ashes – but only a little bit.

The ageing rocker caused a storm last year when he first revealed he had ingested father Bert's ashes, but he later retracted the story claiming it was a joke.

Now The Rolling Stones star,64, has admitted that he did sniff the remains after his dad's death in 2002.

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Coming clean: Rocker Keith Richards has finally admitted it was true that he snorted his dead father Bert Richards' ashes

"I opened my dad's ashes and some of them blew out over the table, just because of the suction of the lid, you know what I mean?

"I looked at my dad's ashes down there and - what am I gonna do? "Do I desecrate them with a dustbin and broom? So I wet me [sic] finger and I shoved a little bit of Dad up me[sic] hooter.

"The rest of them I put round an oak tree, which is coming up a treat. And I'm sure he's still blessing me," he told US music magazine Blender.

Proud father: Keith Richards with his beloved father Bert

A spokesman for the star declined to comment on this latest confession.

Richards original revelation in an interview with NME magazine in April 2007 left fans amused and bewildered.

He intimated he had taken his mixed his father's ashes with cocaine: "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? 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 s***.

It went down pretty well. And I'm still alive," he commented.

Richards' family were understood to have been so taken aback by the claim, which came at a time when mother Doris was seriously ill with cancer, that they pushed him to make a retraction.

Mark Beaumont, the journalist who conducted the interview, insisted it had been no throwaway joke.

However, the star subsequently backtracked, saying: "The complete story is lost in translation. The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English oak.

"I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it. I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were. That tight."

Old school of rock: Keith with his bandmates, from left, Sir Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, and Charlie Watts

Richards kept a bedside vigil with his mother while she was dying and was with her when she died on April 21, 2007.

The guitarist says that he has not taken cocaine since he fell out of a tree in Fiji in 2006. He underwent surgery.

He commented: "I no longer do cocaine - I'm not allowed to since I broke my head open, otherwise I'd be right in, baby. Nothing stops the old snorter. But I can't do it. I don't do it."

In the interview, he also dismissed bandmate Bill Wyman's claim that he had slept with more than a thousand women.

He said: "I've slept with some of the most beautiful women in the world, but I've never been in it for the body count. I've seen women go in and out of Bill Wyman's room 10 minutes at a time - you call that sleeping?

"And if Bill feels like the stud of the century, then let him carry on thinking so.

"But, given my reputation, I'm very... frugal in that area. If I'm with a lady, I'm with a lady. I can never say good-bye; I can only say hello."