Slurring his words and highly unsteady on his feet, Pete Doherty was repeatedly attempting to manoeuvre the key into the lock of his vintage car.
Fumbling and failing, he asked me to help him, insisting he needed to drive the almost ten miles from his flat in east London’s Hackney to watch his beloved Queens Park Rangers football team in west London, where he had been invited to the director’s box.
Each time he missed the slot, and in the end I snatched his keys away from him and told him to get a taxi.
It was 2006, and the Libertines singer’s fame was then at its height – as was his drug addiction.
Pete was also dating supermodel Kate Moss, prompting a media frenzy. That’s what had taken me to his grubby flat that Saturday morning. I’d been sent to ask him about a story I was intending to write. I can’t remember the specifics but it must have been to do with Kate.
What I discovered there was a man who certainly hadn’t been to bed the night before, stank to high heaven and had dirty nails, seemingly confirming the tales of his legendary, self-destructive excess.
Troubled Pete Doherty at the height of his fame in 2003
 Pete and his then-girlfriend, supermodel Kate Moss, made a cool couple back in 2007Â
Over in France, it’s artisan cheeses that are now Doherty’s poisons of choice
So when it emerged this week that at his five most recent gigs, Pete has had to sit in a chair to perform – despite being only 45 – my first thought was: it’s a miracle he is still alive.
The singer, who has type 2 diabetes, explained to fans in Munich why he no longer stands to sing: ‘I saw the doctor today and he said you need to stay off your feet as much as you can otherwise you’ll lose your toes.’
He had been wearing slippers or socks on stage but since Friday has been in strip-fastener orthopaedic shoes for the swollen feet from which diabetics can suffer.
It was certainly sad to see – especially having come across Pete often during his hedonistic prime in the mid-Noughties. Despite his well-documented heroin and crack cocaine addiction, he was the life and soul on the party circuit – wearing a rakish hat at all times.
Today, Pete’s life is worlds away from both the glamorous parties and his grotty flat in Hackney – from which he was eventually evicted for not paying the rent. The singer also attended the party in East London in December 2006 at which 30-year-old Cambridge graduate and aspiring actor Mark Blanco was allegedly thrown from a first-floor balcony. He died the next day from head injuries.
Doherty and his bodyguard Jonathan Jeannevol, known as ‘Johnny Headlock’, were seen on CCTV fleeing the party – straight past Blanco’s body in the street.
Jeannevol handed himself into police and confessed to murder before later retracting his statement. No charges were brought.
Doherty quit the UK to live in the Normandy countryside in 2020, a decision he credits with saving his life. ‘When I first moved to France I stayed in cities like Marseilles, Paris, Lille and Perpignan, but it was too easy for the [drug] dealers to find me,’ he said last year. It was only in rural Normandy, where he now lives with his French wife Katia, that he found peace.
Louis Theroux interviewed the colourful frontman back in November 2023
The Libertines singer performing on stage in 2022
Doherty sadly now has to perform seated due to his diabetes
The diabetes diagnosis was a cruel blow. Last spring he discussed the disease, for which obesity is a strong risk factor. ‘I’m lacking the discipline to tackle cholesterol,’ he said, before conceding he was ‘a bit of a glutton’.
‘I have seen a liver doctor who says I need to change my diet – too much cheese, too much milk,’ he said in another interview.
‘But the cheese is so good, that’s part of the reason I stay here [in Normandy]… It’s a cholesterol and diabetes thing now, but there are tablets, it makes a big difference.’
Brie, camembert and comte – a French alpine cheese – are his poisons of choice today, though at least they are legal.
Meanwhile, those who know Pete tell me that he had ‘no choice’ but to leave Britain and start again.
‘Pete’s life was going from bad to worse in London and he needed to get out,’ says one of his friends. ‘He would be dead if he hadn’t gone. He thought he was cool and trendy, he thought he had it all. But in actual fact he had very little. It was sad.’
Having been born in Hexham, Northumberland, to a military family, after his A-levels Pete moved to his grandmother’s flat in London – where he said he felt ‘destined’ to be. It was while studying English literature at Queen Mary University in London that he met Carl Barat. They formed the Libertines and enjoyed chart success with their 2002 debut album Up The Bracket.
But things went wrong the following year as Pete was banned from playing with the band until he could overcome his drug addiction, leading both to the formation of his new band, Babyshambles, as well as an incident in which he burgled Carl’s flat. Pete’s sentence of six months in jail was later reduced to two.
In 2004 he was voted the coolest man in Britain by music magazine NME. ‘It really went to his head then,’ said the pal. ‘He thought he was invincible.’
Next came supermodel Kate, which stunned her friends.
Looking back on the relationship in his memoirs, Pete wrote: ‘I thought we could just make a go of it as a couple and f*** everything else, that was my approach, but she was more like, ‘No, you’ve got to get clean and then everything will be fine.’ That was the running battle for the next two and a half years, really, the drugs and her obsession with the tabloids and her image.’
Despite a stint in rehab in Arizona he continued to use heroin, and in 2007 they split up. Kate, who was photographed apparently snorting cocaine while dating Pete, was conscious that his drug-taking was affecting her career, though I’m told what really ended the romance were the rows.
‘While they bonded over many things, including their love for a party, their lives just couldn’t work together. There were lots of rows and in the end it just had to end,’ a source tells me.
Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, of course I gave Pete his car keys back that Saturday in 2006 – but only if he promised not to drive. As I left him he ran off and jumped over a wall. To this day I don’t know if he got in the car. He did, though, make it to West London to cheer on QPR.
Some hours after our meeting my friend, whose father was the owner of the club at the time, called to tell me that Pete had been found using heroin in the toilets at the stadium and thrown out. I recall her saying: ‘He can’t even watch football without smack,’ before we discussed how sad it was to watch the gifted rock star’s demise.
Two decades later and the singer is mercifully clean of drugs. Never would I have thought back then that it would be cheese which now threatens his life.
