Ferry’s knife-carrying son is let off prison
ONE of Bryan Ferry’s sons avoided jail yesterday after being caught carrying a knife for a second time.
Merlin Ferry, 22, had told police to go away and ‘investigate real crime’ when he was found with the weapon.
Officers stopped the student in his uninsured Saab and were searching for drugs when they arrested him on September 29 last year for carrying the lock knife. He told the officers: ‘You can unarrest me now.’
He continued to show no remorse yesterday, complaining about being forced to get up early to travel to court from his Shropshire home.
The Marlborough-educated student received a community order at Isleworth Crown Court, in West London, after the judge delivered a stern lecture on knife crime. The sentence comes two years after a case was dropped when he was stopped while carrying a Gurkha knife.
His lawyer successfully argued then that the weapon – known as a Kukri – was part of a fancy dress outfit he was wearing to a student party.
Passing sentence yesterday on Ferry, who is studying in Barcelona, judge Paul Dugdale told him that coming from a privileged background does not mean the ‘normal rules’ do not apply, and warned of the dangers of carrying a knife.
‘You could walk down the corridor here at Isleworth and go into a courtroom and hear a case where someone had their face opened by a knife and were scarred for life,’ he said.
‘That was caused by somebody who had a knife, problems arose, things happened and it ended up being used.’
The judge said many would have expected that the ‘penny would have dropped’ after the first knife incident. He added: ‘It has taken a bit of time for you to realise that luck and good fortune does not take you out of the normal world, or that normal rules do not apply to you.’
He added ‘If you carry a bladed article again in public again you will spend six months of your life in Wormwood Scrubs.’
Ferry, who admitted possessing a bladed article, was placed on a 12-month community order, which includes 100 hours’ community service. He was ordered to pay £500 costs.
He was also given six penalty points for having no insurance and disqualified for six months under totting up rules.