In Louis Theroux's latest BBC interview series, the award-winning interviewer finds Pete Doherty in rural Normandy, where The Libertines frontman now lives in relative tranquility with his wife and young daughter.
In what is a shocking transformation for those who haven't been following Doherty over the last couple of years, the musician is no longer a scraggly, rakish figure: he's now grey-haired, moustached, and four years clean from the substance addiction issues that famously hounded him for most of his adult life.
Although the interview doesn't unearth the essence of Doherty – "We’ve certainly got to know the indie musician a little better, but he’s rarely caught unawares," said the Standard – it still shines a light on the man who was one of the Noughties' best-known rabble-rousers. The sit-down comes as a reminder of the musician's extraordinary life that has included a stint in prison, famous relationships, brushes with death, and some superb music.
Here is our pick of some of Doherty's most memorable and revealing quotes about everything from death and drugs, to Brexit, and cheese. They're taken from his sit down with Theroux, and from older interviews.
On preparing for jail: “I would have had something stuffed up my arse in readiness for getting sent down…. In hindsight it all seems a bit grotty.”
In his interview with Theroux, Doherty, honest as ever, reflects on preparing himself for court, so that if he did get sent to jail, he wouldn't enter without resources. Despite being in and out of jail, his 2003 six month sentence (which was eventually commuted to two months) for burgling the flat of his bandmate, Carl Barât, undoubtedly remains his most famous stint. In a 2006 interview Doherty said that the worst thing anyone has ever said to him was "six months".
On breaking into Barât's flat: “I was in my honeymoon period with crack and heroin”.
Speaking to to Theroux, Doherty explains why he ended up breaking into Barat's flat. The bandmates had a famously fraught but close relationship: "Carl had a lot of anger," said Doherty in a 2022 Guardian interview. "But now he has an enormous amount of happiness with his kids, and he just loves the time he has with them." Barât features in Theroux's documentary. He asks Doherty if he has forgiven himself for the burglary, and the pair cry.
On Brexit: “You’ll see, you’ll get the most insane new wave of the most incredible [acts]. You see the difference between writing a poem in prison and writing a poem in a cottage by a lake, you know.”
Speaking to Channel 4, Doherty said that the one silver lining of Brexit was that it would result in the creation of some excellent music. Shame it's near-impossible to break even from touring Europe now, though.
On ageing: "I’m just thinking, f**king hell, I really don’t want to die."
Doherty spent much of his 20s and 30s "caning it" with alcohol and drug abuse. Now, aged 44, he has a new appreciation for his life. In an 2019 interview with NME, he explained that crossing the 40-mark prompted a big realisation. In his interview with Theroux, he repeats this sentiment, but he's doubtful about how many years he has ahead of him, and whether he will live to see his third child, five month old Billie-May, grow up. “You are looking at a very sick man,” he says to Theroux. “I f**king battered it, didn’t I, caned it…. Death’s lurking.”
On quitting drugs, once and for all: “I pulled my pants down and pissed all over the counter, was shouting stuff about the war."
Doherty started his current period of sobriety after being arrested twice in one week in Paris in 2019. First he was caught buying crack, then he was reprimanded for jumping on a motorcyclist who was, Doherty says in his memoir, driving “his scooter towards one of my dogs”. In the memoir he explains that at the police station he continued his tirade: "When they came to interview me, I was just in my QPR shirt and my pants and a piss-soaked blanket." In the BBC docuseries, Theroux asks Doherty if the musician is possibly guilty of glamourising heroin use. Probably, says Doherty, who found it, despite everything, “magical”.
On gaining weight, and cheese: "The cheese, man. The cheese in this area – the brie, the camembert. There’s something special in the grass, you can taste it in the milk, it’s different here, it’s so creamy. I drink it by the pint. And the butter, and the bread, and the saucisson."
It's the sort of thing that's uncomfortable to touch on, but totally remiss not to mention: Doherty's appearance has staggeringly changed. But in a 2022 Guardian article he addresses the metamorphosis himself. “It’s a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?” he said, apparently patting his stomach, before blaming the cheese and Normandy's spread of delicacies. Speaking to the Standard in October 2023, he added: "I have seen a liver doctor who says I need to change my diet — too much cheese, too much milk. But the cheese is so good, that’s part of the reason I stay here… It’s a cholesterol and diabetes thing now, but there are tablets, it makes a big difference."
On dating Kate Moss: "I love her but I wouldn't marry her if she [Kate Moss] was the last woman on earth."
At the time, they were one of the coolest couples on Earth. Though Moss and Doherty's two-year on-off, rock 'n' roll, mid-Noughties relationship was bad for both parties – it famously led to Moss being photographed with what looked like cocaine at a Babyshambles album recording session – it did give the world some outrageous quotes. Doherty once described Kate as a "nasty old rag”. Another time he said the relationship "became like the Vietnam War.”
On the death of Mark Blanco: “It’s all so shady and f**ked up.”
An incident that still follows Doherty around to this day is his proximity to Mark Blanco on the night of the 30-year-old aspiring actor's death. Blanco fell from a balcony during an East London party that Doherty was also attending in December 2006. There was a long, drawn-out investigation into the death, and Doherty and two friends, who were caught on CCTV running away from the scene, were interviewed by the police. They were then released.
“Maybe I should have stood my ground and had the balls to flush everything down the toilet and be there when the police came,” said Doherty to Theroux. “But I didn't want to see the police. It was a f***ing inconvenience to me and that's an awful thing to say. He's lying dying in the street and I was concerned about getting nicked for possession."
"Nobody knows what happened," he added. "I certainly didn’t see it."
On his memoir: "They’ve taken all the good bits out, because everybody’s lawyer had to read it. Carl had a good look at it, Kate [Moss]’s lawyers wanted to see it. I kept saying, ‘You gotta keep that in, it’s funny!’ But they kept saying, ‘No, no, no.'"
Doherty's 2022 memoir, A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty, was predictably shocking, telling story after story of self-destruction, thorny relationships, rehab and a series of scandals. Even the story of its creation, as he explained it to the Guardian, is fairly haphazard, as it was edited and re-edited by lawyers and concerned parties. Plus, Doherty hadn't realised it was going to be ghost written in the first person. "The initial agreement was I would talk to him on the phone and it would be in the third person. But when the book arrived it was all ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’. It’s completely shocking."
On raising kids: "Technically I do have two other children, but I wasn't really a part of their daily upbringing. Different times."
Speaking to Theroux, Doherty reflected on bringing up his three children, 20-year-old Astile, 11-year-old Aisling Erin and Billie-May. He had his first child with singer-songwriter Lisa Moorish, who was the lead singer of Kill City. He had his second child with South African model Lindi Hingston.
On his band’s music: “I feel like we’ve always had good songs, so why have we never sold as many records as Oasis? Maybe it’s our voices? It must be something. If I wrote songs for Liam Gallagher, he’d have 50 number one singles this year.”
Despite releasing four studio albums (the second of which went to number one in the UK; the third went to number three), giving the world heady singles Can't Stand Me Now (2004) and Don't Look Back Into The Sun (2003), winning awards and touring the world, when speaking to the i newspaper last month, Doherty said he felt The Libertines could have still sold more records.
On hearing about Amy Winehouse’s death: "When Amy died I was sat in a room, a matchbox room in Camden Town, not able to leave, basically wallowing in my own filth. Literally knee-deep in shit."
Doherty and Amy Winehouse's close and destructive friendship became tabloid-fodder in the early 2010s. Speaking to NME in 2012, Doherty explained that when he heard his friend had died, he was, "Literally not able to move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't see anyone. I couldn't pick up the guitar, and when I did pick up the guitar it was woeful ballads about how Amy wouldn't be coming round tonight. It wasn't a very inspiring time."
Later in 2012, he explained to the Mail on Sunday that, “This is difficult for me to admit. But, yes, it’s true. Amy and I were lovers. I loved her then and, well, I still do today. But towards the end, as only lovers can, she became quite mean and cruel to me. She didn’t suffer fools… and believe me, she had a mean right hook.”
