RONNIE Wood is 61 and looks like Methuselah.

The self-confessed alcoholic is back in a rehabilitation clinic after a 10 day spree during which it is said he was drinking two bottles of vodka a day.

Which is what legendary rock stars used to do when the late Keith Moon was bashing away at his drums as Roger Daltrey sang “Hope I die before I get old”. Many of them did, too.

Ron was on a binge with Keith Richards, 64, when his fellow Rolling Stone fell out of a coconut tree in Fiji two years ago and damaged his skull.

This time he was with a Russian cocktail waitress called Ekaterina Ivanova, who is 20 and looks 16, at his country home in County Kildare in Ireland.

It was at first thought that Ron, a talented artist, had taken the young lady along so he could paint her, although how anyone could hold a brush steady after two bottles of vodka a day or work out vermilion from burnt sienna, I don’t know.

“Put it down, Ron. That’s turps, not vodka.”

Ekaterina confided to close friends (who were soon on the phone to the tabloids) that she had fallen in love with the wildman of rock.

Ron’s son Jesse went to Ireland and brought his dad back by private jet and straight into rehab.

The Russian waif, meanwhile, is now considering her options and the several lucrative offers from newspapers to sell her story, proving that true love against the odds can have a happy ending.

How the other half live, eh?

Now I am a self-confessed Rolling Stone fan. They remain, to me, the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

But I wonder what might have happened if I had gone on a bender?

Would a nubile Russian cocktail waitress have looked into my beer smudged sixty-something features and suddenly recognised the man of her dreams? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Especially since I don’t have a country retreat in County Kildare, access to private jets or a bank account that could solve the national debt of a small African country.

I would more than likely have ended up with my chum Billy Shoes and, if we had gone to Ireland, it would have been courtesy of £10 return fares from Ryanair.

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. Now all I have to do is persuade my wife to let me go.

It may not be rock and roll, but I’d like it.