Doherty Spanish Date Hits The Rocks

Within 24 hours of running what looks to be a speculative rumor story about Pete Doherty and supermodel ex-girlfriend Kate Moss planning to marry in Ibiza, The Sun ran another saying the Babyshambles frontman failed to make his August 14th show on the island.

Newspaper reports suggest his old passport had expired and a new one had been delayed because the authorities didn’t like the way he looked – the The Daily Mirror called it “a silly pose” – on the photographs he submitted.

The original story, which was printed on the morning of his show at the increasingly popular Bar M, was obviously speculative in the sense that it predicted Doherty would be somewhere at a given time. It had a mixture of quotes from “worried showbiz pals” who feel it’s a big mistake for 32-year-old Moss to marry a rocker battling cocaine and heroin addiction, and “an insider” who said the 27-year-old former Libertine never looked better.

However, the passport office – no doubt worried that airport security wouldn’t know the real Pete Doherty if they met him – reportedly returned his mug shots and told him to try another pose.

It seems no one thought to ring police records and ask to thumb through the collection they must have gathered over the last couple of years.

It’s the second time this summer Doherty has failed to appear at the San Antonio, Spain, beachfront bar, having pulled an earlier show because it clashed with his return to a Portuguese rehab clinic.

Andy McKay, who runs the Ibiza Rocks summer season and the island’s Manumission nightclub, is on record saying he has sympathy for Doherty and is hoping it will be third time lucky sometime during the first couple of weeks in September.

Part of Doherty’s treatment involves a new implant to suppress his cravings for drugs. The August 16th edition of The Daily Star said he’s trying to sell the old one on eBay.

– John Gammon