Police drop charges against Otis Ferry

It looks like Otis Ferry (pictured), the fox-hunting son of the rock star Bryan Ferry, will not be returning to prison anytime soon. As reported here, he was jailed last year for allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice. Now the police are saying that they are going to drop the charges due to a lack of evidence.

Is he jumping for joy? Not a bit of it. He is furious that he was locked up in Gloucester Prison for nothing. "This whole thing could have been avoided," Ferry, 26, told the Independent. "It is not only frustrating, but it is devastating. If you have ever been in prison you will know it is not very nice. I had to spend four months there for something I told the police was not true from day one."

Ferry, 25, was charged with trying to nobble a prosecution witness who was due to give evidence against him in a robbery case - he is alleged to have telephoned David Hodgkiss, a groomsman, and "instructed him not to provide the police with certain evidence in relation to an allegation of robbery". On a separate occasion, he was accused of threatening to "discredit Hodgkiss as a disgruntled employee”.

The man who sent him jail, Judge Martin Picton, has not yet allowed the charges to be dropped, but has ordered that the Crown Prosecution Service explain themselves, saying: "This is nonsense at the moment. I'm not proceeding without a much fuller explanation of what is going on here."

Ferry, who has been out of jail on £25,000 bail since January and has to report to police once a week, remains sceptical about the matter: "Until I hear it in court at the next hearing, I won't believe that the perverting the course of justice charge has been dropped. I was in prison for four months because the police claimed that their sensitive investigation would be prejudiced if I was out... What they accused me of was simply not true and I tried to tell them that but they didn't listen." ·