Try legalising drugs on the Isle of Man, says Jagger

Mick Jagger has called on the new British government to legalise drugs - and he thinks the process should start with an experiment on the Isle of Man.

The island community halfway across the Irish Sea was just the place, he argued, because that's where "they try out new mobile phones".

Was he stoned when he suggested it? Apparently not. "You usually try these things out in very small places," he told the US talk show host Larry King. "You know, like you try a new product out in a small kind of society or an island somewhere.

"And in England they always try out new mobile phones in the Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try - you should try the legalisation of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens."

The Rolling Stones' frontman continued: "Human beings seem to have a propensity to want to take drugs in some form... I think you have to take that as read, you know." But he felt that only legalisation would bring an end to the cycle of crime and violence caused by the illegal drugs trade.

Jagger, now 66, was being interviewed by King about the re-issue of the seminal 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, which was famously recorded in a cloud of drugs and booze at a house rented by Keith Richards and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in the South of France.

Jagger's comments to Larry King had been pre-recorded, allowing him to also attend the Cannes film festival premiere of a documentary, Stones in Exile, about the making of the original album.

The film by Stephen Kijak, which will be broadcast on BBC1 next Sunday, features unseen outtakes from the Stones' public appearances, footage from a 1972 documentary by Robert Franks which was never officially released, and new interviews with the band.

Jagger told the press in Cannes: "It was a great period (of history) and this film evokes it." Asked whether it was difficult making an album when the band were often drunk and on drugs, he replied: "It's quite easy really." ·