Nigel Havers says a film about the Redlands drug bust is in development and could be made sometime this year, but he has ruled himself out of playing his father, Lord Michael Havers. The 74-year-old actor said he is simply too old for the part.
That puts nigel havers back in the orbit of one of the most notorious cases tied to The Rolling Stones. Lord Michael Havers was the barrister who defended Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Keith Richards after police raided Redlands in February 1967 during a party attended by members of the band, a case that turned into drug charges against Jagger, Richards and art dealer Robert Fraser.
Havers discussed the project on the A Night in with Sally Lindsay podcast and said Chichester Festival staged a musical of the case last year. “Chichester Festival did a musical of [the case] last year, I think it’s going on tour and then a film is going to be made sometime this year, but I am too old now to play my dad,” he said.
The family connection runs deeper than a single courtroom drama. Lord Michael Havers later became Lord Chancellor under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1987 to 1988, and he eventually had Jagger’s conviction overturned while Richards’s prison sentence was quashed and replaced with conditional discharge. For Havers, the story is not abstract. He said his parents hated The Stones before one night the news broke on television, his father first joked that he hoped he would not be asked to defend them, then took the call about an hour later and agreed to do it.
Havers also recalled how close the case came to the family home. “They came to stay with us, and we were sworn to secrecy, and Mick was very frightened about what was going to happen,” he said. He added that after Richards came out of jail, the guitarist joked to his father about prosecuting the Queen after being offered a spliff in prison, only for Lord Havers to reply, “I think not.”
The planned film arrives while Havers is already on the road, touring the UK with his unscripted one-man show, Talking B****. It also follows his turn last year as his real-life grandfather, Sir Cecil Havers, in the ITV drama A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. What remains open now is who will play Lord Michael Havers if the Redlands film goes ahead later this year.
