Flavor Flav jailed in Las Vegas (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Flavor Flav jailed in Las Vegas

8:56pm Wednesday 17th October 2012 in National Entertainment News © Press Association 2013

Flavor Flav has been jailed on felony and misdemeanour charges after arguing with his fiancee and threatening to attack her teenage son with a knife, police said.

The 53-year-old former rapper, hip-hop and reality television star, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr, was arrested at a home several miles south west of the Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas police officer Bill Cassell said.

Patrol officers did not report that anyone was injured.

Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison and a misdemeanour battery-domestic violence charge that could get him six months in county jail, according to jail records.

He was being held on 23,000 dollars bail in jail pending an initial court appearance on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

Drayton, whose public persona includes wearing a big clock on his chest, was an original member of the politically and socially militant rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s and 90s.

In recent years he has starred in several reality TV series and lent his name and recipes to short-lived chicken and soul food restaurants in Clinton, Iowa, and Las Vegas.

He has a criminal history that includes arrests and convictions on traffic infractions, a month in jail for assaulting his then-girlfriend in 1991, and three months in prison for shooting at a neighbour in 1993.