Oh christ, here we go again.

Before he was jailed, we thought that Pete Doherty had kicked the drugs. His ballooning weight suggested that he’d either got his appetite back or he’d found a brand-new drug that was mostly made of congealed chip fat. Either way, Pete Doherty was off the drugs and it was a relief.

Except he wasn’t - according to reports, Pete Doherty is back taking all the heroin he can get his hands on in prison. That’s a report that comes from a prisoner, so it must be true, because everyone knows that prisoners are the nicest, most honest group of people in the world.

Prison, they say, changes a man. Not just physically - although you’d be a fool to turn down the offer of having a shaky amateurish tattoo drawn on you by a mentally-suspect rapist - but mentally, too. Look at Pete Doherty.

Before Pete Doherty went to jail for the first time in 2003, he was a wide-eyed innocent who’d never dream of doing anything unless it involved taking drugs or breaking into his bandmate’s flat and stealing loads of stuff. But afterwards? Well, afterwards Pete Doherty was pretty much exactly the same but with a shit book of prison poetry with him.

And now Pete Doherty’s in prison again, so we can expect to see a similar change at the end of his 14-week sentence. And this time, if reports are to be believed, it’s be a change from a chubby methadone addict to a full-blown heroin addict. You know, just like the good old days. The Press Association reports:

Photographs have been taken of singer Pete Doherty in his prison cell amid claims that the 29-year-old has been taking heroin in jail. Doherty is serving a 14-week sentence in the detox unit at Wormwood Scrubs. Pictures of the singer in prison taken on a mobile phone were published in The Sun. The newspaper claims that despite being given heroin substitute methadone, Doherty is also taking the real thing while in jail. A Prison Service spokesman told the newspaper: “We will act on any intelligence which indicates drugs are being smuggled or abused.”

Although it’s sort of sad that prison has instantly undone whatever slight progress Pete Doherty was making in his efforts to kick drugs, there’s also a silver lining to all this - last time Pete Doherty was a full-blown heroin addict he had a millionaire supermodel girlfriend, and since he quit he hasn’t. So maybe if he keeps taking heroin then more pretty girls with sharp cheekbones and eating disorders will want to sleep with him again. We think that’s how it works.

But don’t get too excited about Pete Doherty’s alleged resumed drug-taking activity - let’s not forget that he’s working on a new album in jail too. And if Pete really is back on the heroin, then we’re sure that album will turn out to be a mumbled directionless mess that nobody would dream of listening to more than once.

So business as usual, then.

Read more:

Jailed Pete Doherty ‘taking heroin’ - Press Association