Smash hit

Peter, her second child, was born when the family were stationed in Northum­berland. The Dohertys already had a daughter, AmyJo (now 28 and a teacher), and later had another, Emily (19 and in the Army). Pete, in Jackie’s account, grew up more prodigy than prodigal. He had lead roles in school plays, won a debating cup and an Arts Council poetry competition. He was always writing verse, including an anti-smoking ode: “Cough, cough, cough,” it begins. From an early age he was an insatiable reader, devoured Brecht, Camus, Genet, Baudelaire, the Romantic poets, and was obsessed with Oscar Wilde. He published his own Queens Park Rangers fanzine, All Quiet on the Western Avenue. He acquired 11 mostly A* GCSEs, and a bunch of A levels decent enough to take him to Queen Mary’s, London, to read English. He was patient and cheerful, gentle with his grandparents. There were no door-slamming strops. “Life was just wonderful,” Jackie says wistfully. “Well, that is my perception. You’d have to ask him.”

Jackie prided herself in communicating with her teenage children. She held out from buying a dishwasher because in the routine of handwashing, her kids opened up about their lives. “I was strict,” she reflects. “Peter says I was stricter than my husband. I like truth, I like honesty, I like things to be done properly. The kids never roamed the streets. All around us were teenagers who partied. And we didn’t allow that. Or rather, it didn’t become an issue because the kids were busy with their various activities.” She recalls Peter and a friend entering a stand-up comedy competition and although they won through to the next round, it went on too late so Peter just came home. The only trouble she can remember is nagging him to do his paper round.

Doherty’s family were posted frequently – to Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland – and the transience of Army life has been blamed for Doherty’s addiction. But the constant uprooting didn’t bother Pete or AmyJo, although Emily hated it and opted for boarding school. Pete learnt German, had a free, outdoor childhood chasing lizards around the Cyprus base. He made friends easily. “We’re a military family and we’re used to moving around,” says Jackie, currently stationed in Dorset. “Everywhere is so exciting. You unpack and you throw yourself into the community. A lot of people don’t like that life. But I still love it today, at my age. I would like to be posted tomorrow.”

Being officer class does not mean that the Dohertys are in any sense posh. On a crude class calculator they’d register as aspirational lower-middle. They are grafters, copers, resourceful and uncomplaining, Queen and country folk. And the shame of having a son flaunt his crack habit, perform at Live8 before millions too doped to remember his words, has hit his father hardest. He is a problem-solving, practical man, says Jackie, and it pains him that this has no solution. And he has his pride: how do you discipline recruits under your command when you feel you have failed with your own son?

After a stormy few days in London trying to thrash out Doherty’s problems in early 2005, Peter senior decided that he was tired of broken promises and vowed never to see his son until he is clean of drugs. “It is ironic,” says Jackie, “because my husband is a record collector. He has 5 or 6,000 records and most of them would be by drug addicts. But it is different when it is your own son.”

It was only after Pete left home that he started experimenting with drugs. Perhaps he felt the thrill of freedom from the rigour of military life and his family? More likely, drugs were just part of his romantic inclinations. The Libertines, the band he set up with Carl Barat, espoused a manifesto of individual freedom and Doherty liked to pretend the heroin he smoked was opium.

In an afterword to Jackie’s book, Doherty senior describes his pride and excitement at the Libertines’ early gigs, but adds, “Peter’s greatest misfortune was to become famous. People seem hell-bent on perpetuating his wretchedness – a pathetic, limp figure.”

This “tough love” approach has clearly affected Doherty. Recently he told a newspaper: “I say to my dad, “I respect you and I love you enough not to talk about you any more. Do you hear me? But f*** you. Because there’s a fellow here who’s your son and he wants to be your mate and he doesn’t want to upset his mum. Why are you being so stubborn? Why are you being so hard?”

When Doherty met Kate Moss in 2005 the craziness around him multiplied. A year of fights and arrests culminated in the footage of the couple snorting cocaine in a record studio. She dumped him, his drug-taking worsened, he was arrested, then entered treatment (his sixth spell) in Arizona. Jackie only knew he had fled when his record company called to say he’d been arrested in London on drug charges.

This for Doherty’s father was simply enough. “Peter [senior] was sick of the phone going, sick of journalists ringing, sick of being questioned at work.” Her mobile phone has caused a rift in their marriage: she refuses to turn it off as Doherty often rings her at 3am. “I feel I have to be contactable at all times. So there is no peace in the house.”

Just before Christmas, Jackie’s husband told her to leave home for a week. He needed to be alone. So scared was she that he was about to kill himself, she warned the camp padre. But her husband called her home only two days later. He hadn’t slept, was severely distressed. They didn’t celebrate Christmas that year, but sent their daughters off on a holiday to Cyprus. Both had suffered from being Pete Doherty’s sisters: AmyJo changed jobs and Emily left school before her A levels to escape the gossip about their brother’s antics.

Peter senior moved into the spare room, away from his wife’s phone. I ask if Jackie felt torn between her son and her marriage and she says, “I could never make the choice. I won’t give up my son and I can’t give up my husband because I take my vows seriously. If my husband chose to leave me, that’s his decision.”

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