Who woulda thunk huh? Rock n roll's original bad boy wins the Mailer Prize for his biography. Turns out this bad boy isn't all that bad after all right?

On a night he was honored for his way with words, Keith Richards was clearly winging it.

"This is one for the books, if you get my drift — you hacks," the 67-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist joked Tuesday as he accepted the Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography, a prize earned by his million-selling memoir "Life."

Wearing tinted glasses, a long scarf around his neck and a wide red band around his sprawl of salt and pepper hair, Richards stood before hundreds dressed in suits and gowns at the Mandarin Hotel in Manhattan and loosened up as if presiding over a celebrity roast. He chuckled. He swore. He reasoned that since he had been writing — songs — since age 16, his appearance at a literary event was not a total "intrusion."

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