OLD BOY ESCAPES JAIL OVER COCAINE AT HOTEL

THE black sheep of one of Britain's wealthiest families, who was
expelled from Eton for smoking drugs, escaped jail yesterday despite
admitting possessing cocaine and crack cocaine.

Josh Astor, the illegitimate son and heir of the late Lord Kagan - a
disgraced friend of Harold Wilson - was sentenced to 60 hours
community service by Horseferry Road magistrates in London.

Asked what he thought of the verdict as he left court, the 32-year-old
former boyfriend of Jade Jagger said: "I think it was a draw, wasn't
it?"

Astor was found by police wandering across the rooftop of a five-star
hotel and bleeding from both arms one morning in October.

Drugs paraphernalia were found in his room at Blakes Hotel in South
Kensington, including crack cocaine worth UKP15, a small amount of
powder cocaine and a pipe for making crack.

Astor, a company director from West Kensington, admitted two counts of
possessing a class A drug, allowing his room to be used for taking
drugs and possessing items used for taking drugs.He left court looking
gaunt and thin after the submission of medical reports, which were not
made public.

Mark Haslam, representing Astor, said that his client had been wrongly
accused at an earlier hearing of being naked on the rooftop. He said
that it was another man, awaiting sentence in connection with the
incident, who had supplied the drugs. "Another man entered the room
subsequently who brought the drugs," he said.

After a hearing in March, he told reporters: "I just went up on the
roof to have a cigarette. I don't have a drugs problem and I don't
have a medical problem. I have not been involved in drugs other than
in a social capacity."

The incident was the latest in a stream of misdemeanours involving a
man who suffered a troubled, if privileged, upbringing. The product of
an affair between Lord Kagan, the Gannex raincoat tycoon, and Judy
Innes, a Cambridge-educated fashion editor, Astor was adopted by his
mother's husband.

His new father was the former Tory MP Michael Astor. Mr Astor died
during the boy's first year at Eton. around the time that his natural
father was jailed for ten months for theft and false accounting at
Gannex.

At 21, having been expelled from Eton as a teenager, Astor hit the
headlines when a late-night tryst with Mick Jagger's daughter, Jade,
led to her expulsion from boarding school. She ended the relationship
when he was found in bed with the daughter of another Rolling Stone,
Charlie Watts.

In 1989, Astor was jailed for three months for possessing drugs, but
was freed on appeal and fined.

Asked once about his attitude to drugs, he joked: "Not before lunch."