Pete Doherty and QPR: ‘Loftus Road became this mythologised place – this is who I am’ By Tom Burrows Nov 14, 2023 Pete Doherty, Libertines frontman and wild child of the 2000s, is in the reception of a central London hotel holding his five-month-old baby, Billie-May. Wearing his trademark trilby hat, he orders a Bloody Mary and asks what’s happening at Queens Park Rangers, who are fighting at the bottom of the Championship. He is speaking to The Athletic because a documentary about his life, Stranger In My Own Skin, was released on Thursday, having been filmed and directed by his wife Katia de Vidas. One of the subjects that comes up in the documentary, and came up in his autobiography, A Likely Lad, is football. During the following interview, he talks about: How the west London club gave him a sense of identity When Les Ferdinand tricked him by pretending to be a hotel concierge The QPR fanzines he created in the mid-1990s Hearing Loftus Road from his prison cell Supporting his new local team Le Havre Here is Doherty on the obsession he developed as a teen… Doherty’s earliest footballing memory did not involve trips to Loftus Road. Instead, it was a trip to Anfield — his grandmother lived round the corner from Liverpool’s ground. He remembers being fixated on the Kop, rather than the match itself, describing the crowd as a “writhing mass of bodies that would burst into the same song or hand gesture”. Osgood-Schlatter disease in his left knee as a young teen put an end to any (very) faint dreams Doherty had of becoming a professional footballer, so he turned his attention to what he felt was the next best thing: reporting on it. He started following QPR, his dad’s team, and developed the bug after attending an away match at Southampton’s old ground, The Dell, in April 1992. QPR lost 2-1 with Alan Shearer on the scoresheet for Southampton. please log in to view this image QPR manager Gerry Francis getting the Manager of the Month award in April 1992 (Steve Morton /Allsport via Getty Images) For Doherty, the son of a sergeant major who was constantly moving home as a child, supporting his dad’s team gave him the sense of identity he craved growing up. “I was brought up an army kid but my dad had a strong west London heritage. To me it became this mythologised place,” he says. “I felt, ‘This is who I am’. “When I started going in 1992-93 (the first season of the Premier League) we had an amazing team, spearheaded by Les Ferdinand, under the watchful eye of Gerry Francis. We finished fifth. “I was right in there. I had cousins who had season tickets. My uncle Ian, who is dead now, his ashes are scattered on Loftus Road (QPR’s stadium). It felt like home, I used to get to games early and soak it all up.” Doherty created his own QPR fanzine. He called it All Quiet on the Western Avenue — the Western Avenue (A40) being a major road near QPR’s stadium in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. “My fanzines were the worst kind of football jokes collected,” he explains. “In the days before the internet, you had to write something that could still be read in a couple of weeks so it was more general, looking at the previous few weeks and then trying to do it with humour, giving people something to read at half-time, some jokes. I used to collect programmes but I found them a bit dry, they didn’t really capture what it was to be a QPR fan.” He signed off the fanzine’s editorial with “Pete Doherty Jnr, the youngest fanzine editor in the country”. They sold for £1 each and comprised articles, jokes, cartoons, interviews with players, a letters page and guest columnists. “I wrote obsessively to the players,” he says. He used to go to the club’s training ground too, which led to interviews with Ferdinand, Francis and Ray Wilkins, the former Chelsea and Manchester United midfielder. In issue four, he described manager Wilkins as “very friendly but hardly quotable… talk about cliched and uncontroversial”. “I was really interested in journalism,” he says now. “At one point I wrote to every newspaper in the country asking for a summer job or an apprentice. I was trying to get a foot in the door somewhere, then I thought I’d start my own.” Doherty produced the fanzines with his cousin who still has a season ticket. They did five issues, the last one appearing in 1996. “I have a bundle of unsold copies of issue 1 but there are very few of the later ones as they started doing better,” he says. please log in to view this image The fourth issue of Doherty’s QPR fanzine (Tom Burrows) His favourite player was Ferdinand, who he bumped into years later when the QPR squad and staff were staying in the same hotel as the Libertines before Leeds Festival in 2015. In his book, Doherty wrote: “Les Ferdinand pretended to be the concierge. He knocked on my hotel room door and said, ‘Your luggage ready for collection, Mr Doherty?’. ‘Yeah, yeah, come in’… and it was Les Ferdinand! You can’t imagine. This is a guy I used to chase down the Bloemfontein Road if I saw him before a match. He was a proper god to me.” “It’s all correct,” Ferdinand tells The Athletic. “We were up that way, I think playing Rotherham, and our press officer told me Pete Doherty was in the hotel… he said he’s a massive QPR fan and I was his favourite player. “So we played a trick on him. I went to his room, knocked on the door and he came out and I said, ‘I’ve got something for you’, a drink on a tray, and he was standing there with his mouth open, he couldn’t believe what was happening. “I went in and had a chat with him about QPR. Indie music isn’t my genre but I certainly know who Pete Doherty is. I couldn’t quite believe he was a QPR fan, we had a good chat about it. He knew my goals better than I knew them. His knowledge of the club and some of the things he was bringing up, he was obviously a keen, keen supporter.” Ferdinand stepped down as the club’s director of football this summer, and QPR are now mired in a relegation fight in the Championship. “It’s been a hard old slog for a long time now,” said Doherty. “We are adrift in the relegation zone. It’s pretty desperate really but there’s a new manager now so maybe it could be the start of a brave new era.” After the fanzines ended, QPR continued to hold a place in Doherty’s heart. He used to sneak girls into Loftus Road on dates or sit in the stands with his notebook and pen. “I’ve taken a guitar in there before,” he says. “In the early 2000s you could get in there in the afternoons. I had a picnic date in there once. I got in the dressing rooms once and stole a pair of shirts which I wore as pyjamas. please log in to view this image Doherty talked about how the west London club gave him a sense of identity (Photo: Tom Burrows) “I think I went in there and dropped acid once, the first time I dropped acid, in 1999, I was told you have got to do it in a place you feel comfortable, so if anything goes wrong you feel safe… so I went to Loftus Road, I ended up at Shepherd’s Bush Green and it got really weird. I saw the pitch rolling up like a wave on my trip.” In 2005, he revealed he had a picture of former girlfriend Kate Moss in a QPR shirt inside the sleeve of the first Babyshambles album Down in Albion, on which the first song La Belle et la Bete featured vocals from Moss. In Broken Love Song, from his 2009 solo album Grace/Wastelands, he described how he could hear chants from Loftus Road when he was locked up in London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison in 2008. He starts singing the line from that record: “Through my cell window, hear the Loft boys sing, ‘Come on you R’s’, carried on the wind.” Doherty also wrote about one of the old drinking holes near the ground, General Smuts pub, for a track called “General Smuts” for the Libertines. That ended up as a B-side to one of their big hits, Time for Heroes. The 44-year-old, who now lives in Etretat in Normandy, has more recently spent time at the Stade Oceane, home of Ligue 1 side Le Havre (they were promoted as Ligue 2 champions last season). He says: “I love my wife, I would never be unfaithful to her, but watching Le Havre feels slightly like a bit on the side, whatever that would feel like. Her brother-in-law supports them and took me along. please log in to view this image Doherty’s editorial in his QPR fanzine (Tom Burrows) “There’s a real local passion there. It’s an isolated city, Le Havre. It’s got unions and dockers, it’s a post-industrial city with a strong working-class identity, the fans call themselves the Barbarians. There’s a good vibe there. I wear my QPR shirt to the games and then in moments of madness I sing QPR songs to everyone’s confusion.” In the documentary of his life, released last week, Doherty talked about the similarities between football and music. He said: “That’s everything to me… the screaming, shouting, to be part of that unit, that passion and togetherness…that was really what attracted me to music… because I thought, ‘I’m never going to score a goal and see the crowd go nuts’, that was always what I wanted.” Asked to elaborate, he says: “They both appeal to something primeval and mad. Something dangerous but also exhilarating. The power of the mob but also the spiritual energy round it… football and music have that power… it’s inextricably linked to identity, community, a particular area or a particular band. It’s a way of life, a sense of belonging and meaning. It’s love.” Stranger In My Own Skin is a raw snapshot of Doherty’s heroin years. The film starts with the line, “The chains of addiction are too light to be felt, until they are too heavy to be broken”. Some critics have referenced the film’s silence on the death of Mark Blanco in 2006, who died in unclear circumstances at a London party which was also attended by Doherty. Blanco’s death was the subject of a recent Channel 4 documentary. Doherty, who has a chapter in his book about the incident, has admitted running away from the scene that night, saying he was worried about being caught in possession of drugs. In an interview with Louis Theroux on the BBC that airs tonight, he addressed Blanco’s death. He said: “No one knows what happened because no one saw it. I certainly didn’t see it. You can’t blame her (Blanco’s mum Sheila) for (being angry). Her son fell to his death and some people, I think genuinely, believe he was thrown to his death. And then I’m on camera running away.” He insisted that any anger towards him is “misplaced”. Police have treated the tragedy as an accident. Does he have any pangs of regret when he looks back on his chaotic life? “It’s not so much regret. Sometimes I feel like if I could communicate now with that person back then, I’d say put £20 on Millwall to get to the FA Cup final in 2004 or get a load of QPR fans to wait outside the Bataclan that night in 2015, nothing to do with own life really. If you affect the past, you might affect the present and that might affect Billie-May.” Doherty has been clean from heroin for more than three years now and he hopes the documentary can give hope to those struggling with addiction. “I’m definitely better,” he says. “But I feel like there’s still a bit of work to do. Some days are more difficult than others, it’s a bit like a balancing act, a high-wire act.” With his Bloody Mary drained, the interview draws to a close. Doherty is due to return to France, but his mind is back on QPR now. “I guess I could try and get to Rotherham away on Saturday.” (Top photo: Pete Doherty; by Tom Burrows) please log in to view this image [/QUOTE]
Just got back from seeing bill Bailey I don't know what I expect from live comedy but I've never left a show undisapointed
The Tamil Prince restaurant on Hemingford Road Barnsbury . Really good Indian, short menu (which I always like) everything really delicious. About £35 a head, but we didn’t have the couple of more expensive mains - a rack of lamb and a whole sea bream. Pretty sure we didn’t need them. Highly recommended. Followed by another Royal Shakespeare Company production, but this time not Shakespeare and at the Barbican - their highly praised and multiple award winning staging of the Studio Ghibli anime film My Neighbour Totoro. Absolutely brilliant - technically, visually and musically wonderful staging, but also emotionally resonant. Even a horrible old cynic like me choked up. Works for literally all ages. Apparently virtually sold old until next March, on its second run.
Cool. Back to Shakespeare, this is really good... BBC Two - Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius, Series 1, Episode 1
Listened to Bob Mortimer autobiography as an audiobook (a relatively new experience for me since Spotify started giving 15hrs a month audiobook time free). Have to say this was an excellent listen and laugh-out-loud in many instances. Really believe the book was enhanced listening to Bob read his own life out through his book. I don’t think you could get more perfect interpretation than those crazy, happy and sad moments in life than you do direct from Bob. Highly recommended (and I might have passed it by if I hadn’t remembered Sb mentioning it an age ago). Go for it and go for the audio over written - well worth it.
One of my family just signed up for Apple TV on a free trial. On telly now is something called The Morning Show about a TV news programme starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell as a news anchor accused of me too stuff. Strikes me that this kind of entirely self referential, navel gazing bullshit produced by an industry about itself disappearing up its own arsehole is so completely lacking in self awareness and po faced that hopefully viewers will start laughing at it, or at least the people who write and make it and obviously take themselves rather seriously. In Hitchhiker’s Guide Douglas Adams had a spaceship drifting through the cosmos populated entirely with beauticians, estate agents and the like. I like to think he would have added the people who made this. Still, Apple TV means I get to see Gary Oldman as a seedy spy in Slow Horses.
Now there’s a thought … just had a few 3-month Apple offers and didn’t really see anything of interest. Maybe Ted’s worth it for a watch
Yeah, but this is a two season, 17 episodes remake far superior to the film. The book was written by Louis Therouxs dad, and his cousin Justin Theroux plays the lead role in this. I thought it was very good
shame they didnt come to wellington Review: Limp Bizkit bring noise to sold out Auckland: 'Let's get these motherf...ers bouncing' Amberleigh Jack01:34, Nov 27 2023 There’s nothing quite like the thunderous noise of tens of thousands of boozed-up fans, the moment a favourite band from decades ago kicks off into a set. “Keeping it real, like a Kiwi, motherf...er,” Durst (looking like a caricature of himself in 90s-style baggy shorts and a boofy wig) yelled at the crowd, who moments earlier had been chanting Limp Bizkit in well-lubricated unison. “Limp Bizkit in the house! Let’s get these motherf...ers bouncing.” With the opening chords of Show Me What You Got, the floor-length moshpit was sent into a frenzy, and thousands of fans who were once 20 and angry, turned the packed arena into a hub of enthusiastic aggression, sweat, incredible noise and spilled drinks. More from Stuff: * Warriors urged to use new NRL exemption to buy a big-name All Black' to join Roger Tuivasa-Sheck * Astin Parore, 20, says art business turning over six figures: 'There is a certain stigma' * Why millions and millions of 'cannibal rats' are descending on picturesque fishing town in Queensland And a whole heap of Bizkit-fueled testosterone. This is, after all, nu metal. And Limp Bizkit was - once - at the height of the aggressively macho, angst-filled music movement, that left pools of frenetic youngster energy, baggy jeans, sweat and blood in its wake. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with Stuff please log in to view this image LIMP BIZKIT/FACEBOOK Limp Bizkit in 2017. It may be decades later, and you may have thought the band had been lost in the oblivion of jean chains and CD wallets, but the expletive-laden Durst took to the Auckland stage on Sunday night with the energy of that mid-20-something year old with 50-year-old dance moves, who – if you remember the Woodstock 99 documentary – once managed to rile thousands upon thousands of fans into a set of destruction, vandalism and, well, breaking stuff. And - he reminded the crowd on a few occasions - this crowd is here to party like it’s 1999 (but maybe not Woodstock 99). Monday office consequences be damned. All that was missing was an Eminem diss track feud. And high resolution photo proof that anything on stage ever happened at all, with media photo pit passes revoked by the band at the last minute. Circle pits formed on the floor (an empty circle formed by the crowd, followed by everyone running aggressively into each other at speed), and the fans screamed, clapped and sung with the pent-up energy of late-90s teens who just got dumped while half a bottle down. please log in to view this image N/A Fred Durst performing in the heyday of Limp Bizkit, before he went grey and back when photographers were allowed. He may still have a penchant for “f...” but Durst seems to have mellowed on the over-the-top aggression in his 50s, still encouraging moments where, “the **** hits the fan”, but seemingly genuinely stoked that the mosh pit crowd were looking after their fellow punters. He talked too much about nothing, taking away some of the nostalgic, frenzied crowd energy throughout the 1.5 hour set. But the moment of the night came during one of those chats during a pause in the angst-filled anthem My Generation. Durst pulled up a young boy, Van - holding a sign announcing he was at his first ever gig - onto the stage. Van was then encouraged to “rock the f... out” on stage with Durst and the band. Nookie brought a many thousands-strong chorus singing “stick it up your (yeah)” back to Durst and the big hits like Hot Dog, Rollin’ and Eat You Alive - judging by the noise and the movement of the pit probably drew blood. please log in to view this image SUPPLIED A circle pit forms during Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff on Sunday night. A cover of Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name of sent an already aggressive pit into the kind of friendly violence that will no doubt be keeping physios employed for weeks to come. ADVERTISEMENT Advertise with Stuff The chart-topping cover of the 1970s The Who hit, Behind Blue Eyes gave everyone room to to chill the out, but – despite the mass singalong moment - nobody seemed down to relax from the chaos just yet. In a move that surprised nobody, the aggressive energy of the night climaxed with the band’s notorious hit, Break Stuff. And without pomp, circumstance or encore, the house lights came on and the sea of black returned to reality. please log in to view this image SUPPLIED Young Van on stage with Fred Durst When the week starts and the black demin is replaced with office-friendly attire, there may be a few regrets from the many that went a little too hard on Sunday night. But that’s a Monday problem. The crowd dispersed – a few stumbling – into Auckland’s CBD. For tonight, at least, Fred Durst is still the ringleader to this no-longer-youthful, but still capable of bringing the noise, circus. I’m too old to pretend I’m 20. Moshpits would break me, and my eyes need the help of big screens to truly make sense of what’s happening on stage. But, ringing ears aside, a sojourn back to a rock-filled youth was more fun than expected. As Durst might say: “Welcome to the jungle punk, take a look around. It's Limp Bizkit, f...in’ up your town.”
Van Morrison at the Shepherd's Bush Empire last night. I couldn't go because we're away at Center Parcs with the grandchildren at the moment, but I didn't remember that when I bought the tickets (it also clashed with the Rs game, so I was technically triple-booked), so I passed the tickets on to a friend. I thought I'd check with him as to what he thought, anyway. Turns out Van was promoting his new release - which is a covers album - and it seems Morrison's voice (at 78 years of age) sounds as good as ever and his band was top class. Apparently the choice of material left much to be desired, though - You Are My Sunshine, in particular, sounds like a bizarre choice. All finished by 9.30. My mate's wife said it was like being on a Saga cruise. I've got tickets for the Van Morrison Alumni Band at the Coliseum next week, which I'm hoping will make up for not being there last night.
I got a lucky night with Van and Robert Plant as a double bill for blues week(?) a few years ago. Wasn’t relishing Vans set, with his up/down history, but he was excellent and really enjoyed it. Roll with the Punches is a great album. Robert Plant was awesome too - quite the night.
