Jagger to be knighted in birthday honours

After a career of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, singer Mick Jagger is being tipped to receive the ultimate accolade from the establishment he once outraged – a knighthood in next week's honours list.

Jagger would follow other icons of pop music including Elton John, Paul McCartney and Cliff Richard in being knighted, although presumably not, in the words of the Rolling Stones album, at [Her] Satanic Majesty's request.

The rubber-lipped lothario, a father to seven children by four different women, is to be knighted for his services to music, having never previously received as much as a CBE. In a Channel Four documentary broadcast earlier this year, he commented that "members of the royal family were surprised" that he had not received any honour.

His elevation to the peerage comes after 40 years in the media spotlight. The Rolling Stones bad-boy antics contrasted with the clean-cut image of the Beatles, culminating in Jaggers 1967 conviction for possession of amphetamine, provoking William Rees-Mogg's editorial in The Times entitled "Who Breaks A Butterfly on a Wheel".

His romance with 1960s starlet Marianne Faithfull made more headlines and affairs with Marsha Hunt, star of the musical Hair, and Chrissie Shrimpton followed before he married Bianca Perez Morena de Macias in 1971. A daughter Jade was born the following year.

He met Texan model Jerry Hall in the late 1970s and they married in 1991 and have four children together. Dalliances with models and disputed DNA tests over other alleged offspring led the couple to part but they remain on good terms.

He is believed to have been nominated by Prime Minister Tony Blair, a confirmed Rolling Stones fan, who played cover versions of their hits "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Brown Sugar" in his band Ugly Rumours while at Cambridge University.

Musically, Jagger's career has produced few highlights since the Stones' 1970s heyday. His last solo effort, Goddess in the Doorway, flopped, but the band still pack out stadiums and are due to embark on a world tour later this year.

Jagger has never followed the clean-living route to respectability of fellow rockers Bob Geldof and Elton John. Nevertheless, a gong might sound the end of this 59-year-old's bay-boy image.