A fresh-faced Pete Doherty cameos on MTV
There's this new Pete Doherty video on YouTube.
Perhaps one of the least-beguiling introductory sentences it's possible to type, after all the many months of grainy footage of below-par stage shows or, even better, stupid paparazzi footage of the heroin frontman and Babyshambles addict trying to get into his girlfriend's house.
But there's this new video - old footage, but newly on the internet - of XFM DJ, then MTV presenter Eddy Temple Morris conducting a vox pop interview with keen punters queuing for the new Oasis album (presumably 1997's Be Here Now). And there's Pete, instantly recognisable and nibbling a croissant.
He doesn't say much - "About 17 minutes", "I'm of the Umberto Eco view...", "Trousers" - but it's enough for everyone to see that there is something precocious at work in this gangling teenager, his bright bulbous eyes darting around the place, his charisma still intact even when he butts his nose onto the microphone. By the end of the interview, Eddy even asks Doherty if he fancies being a presenter. It's a joke, and Pete jokes back, nodding excitedly for a brief moment before becoming far more interested in his pastry.
While this witty and engaging cameo is at odds with much of what you see from the performer, particularly in his recent smack-addled years, it does conform to a certain pop precedent: the portrait of the artist as a young gobshite.
Throughout the 70s Steven Morrissey, of Kings Road, Stretford, Manchester besieged music publications across the UK with earnest, argumentative letters, mainly - it seems - defending the New York Dolls against any criticism, while dishing it out to every other pretender to punk's throne.
A decade earlier, one David Jones (soon to be known as Bowie to distinguish himself from the cheery Monkees member) appeared on national television to be grilled by the 60s answer to Huw Edwards, Cliff Mitchelmore. The cause? Bowie was standing firm with his fellow members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men. He was 17, but recounted with a straight face his desire to put an end to inquiries as to the whereabouts of his handbag on the high street. Along with his colleagues he promised a grand march in defence of longhairs. Baldermaston, it was to be called.
What all these antics have in common is youthful precocity, something a little different from the self-confidence necessary to become a Mouseketeer. In fact, these performances add lustre to the idea that, even if you were to set aside their musical talents, there is something special at work in our favourite rockstars. That they would have done something interesting even if they had never recorded a song. Perhaps Pete Doherty would have made a great VJ after all.
