Pete Doherty is a funny old goose, isn't he? In the space of just over a year he's gone from being the critic's dirty-fingernailed darling to a widely-regarded spuff-monkey, but it can't just be because Pete Doherty's music is rubbish, can it?
Of course not – most of the reasons why Pete Doherty is quickly falling out of favour with everyone is because he keeps on ending up in court on tedious drugs charges. Like he was earlier today, turning up for sentencing on one of the roughly 12 billion times he's been arrested for possession of drugs lately. And the good news is that Pete Doherty managed to avoid jail yet again, instead being slapped with a £770 fine and a four-month driving ban. Well, at least that's good news for Kate Moss at least, since she won't have to wait until Pete Doherty gets out of chokey before she can become the wife of a jumped-up tuneless busker now.
It's been said – probably by us – that Pete Doherty gets arrested so often that you can set your watch by him. That's not true – we tried it once and every couple of weeks our watch would start to smell a bit and make a noise like an asthmatic pensioner running for the bus, so we threw it away. But our, admittedly fairly laboured, point is that Pete Doherty gets arrested a lot.
We've tried in the past to spice up Pete Doherty's trouble with the law as best we can – by saying that he kung-fued a reporter when really he just lazily swung his leg at her, by feigning a lack of interest, even by getting you to write Pete Doherty haikus – but it keeps happening. All the while most people only want to know when Pete Doherty will either marry Kate Moss, have a stupidly violent fight with a photographer or squirt his own blood around at everyone. But this morning Pete Doherty was back in court – the place where he's been told he's doing really well at kicking drugs – to be sentenced for being caught with loads of drugs on him again, as CNN reports:
Sentencing him, District Judge Jane McIvor told Doherty that the offences were not serious enough to require a custodial sentence. The judge told the singer the punishment was about "hitting your pockets" as she handed down £200 ($395) fines for each possession of class A substances and £50 ($98) fines for each of the cannabis offences, plus costs. Doherty, who has been in rehab to battle his drug addiction, pleaded guilty to possession of 0.05oz (1.4 grams) of cannabis, 0.06oz (1.82g) of cocaine, 0.05oz (1.37g) of heroin, 0.03oz (0.9g) of cannabis and a quantity of crack cocaine.
Maybe this will be the last time that Pete Doherty will find himself in legal trouble over the possession of drugs. On the other hand there are still 27 days left of 2006, so it's possibly fair to expect him getting arrested another dozen or so times by then.
Read more: