Keith Richards to curate BBC Four for a Lost Weekend

Keith Richards will "take over" BBC Four for a weekend which will see him curating the TV schedule.

The Rolling Stones guitarist, 72, is set to host three days from 7pm to 4am on Friday to Sunday, called the Lost Weekend, on the channel.

He will pick all of the programmes to be shown and will feature in between them in snippets from an in-depth interview.

Richards said: "No one has taken over a TV channel before. Let's see how it flies!"

Director Julien Temple, acclaimed for films such as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, will be at the helm of the project.

Temple said: "It's an open invitation for the audience to get to know Keith in-depth over three nights in a way that has never been seen before.

"As dawn breaks, those viewers who have experienced the full ride can celebrate the fact that they have been able to make it all the way and out the other side with Keith Richards as the sun comes up on their TV screens."

Films selected by Richards to be shown include Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, The Man Who Would Be King starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, as well as archive footage of musicians such as Johnny Cash and Richards with American guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix.

The schedule will also feature never-before-seen archive footage of The Rolling Stones.

Temple will screen his 75-minute Director's Cut of Keith Richards - The Origin of the Species, which viewers saw on BBC Two earlier this year.

The documentary told the story of Richards' formative years in the post-war period as part of the BBC Music My Generation season.

The full schedule of what will air and when on the Lost Weekend will not be released beforehand.

Head of music TV commissioning, Jan Younghusband, said: "BBC Four is very much the musician's channel so we were thrilled when Keith agreed to curate a weekend of programming, giving viewers a truly original experience."