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Paris police arrest British rocker Pete Doherty twice in three days

Just a day after British artist Pete Doherty was released following a cocaine bust, French police arrested him again after a drunken brawl in Paris.

Published: 11 November 2019 08:32 CET

Paris police arrest British rocker Pete Doherty twice in three days

File photo of Pete Doherty at a gig in 2016. Photo: Fred Tanneau/AFP

Doherty, 40, the front man of the Libertines, was arrested on Sunday for assaulting a man while drunk, said the Paris prosecutors' office.

His lawyer Arash Derambarsh said Doherty was arrested after a fight with another man who was also drunk, who had filed a complaint for assault against him.

After being released on Saturday from custody following an arrest for possession of cocaine, Doherty “went home then went out again to have a drink”, the lawyer added.

But because of the detox treatment he has been following for a month he cannot hold his drink, said Derambarsh.

Doherty was first arrested in the early hours of Friday morning when Paris police caught him just after he had bought cocaine.

The singer opted for a simplified procedure for people caught using drugs, agreeing to pay daily 50-euro fines for 100 days, failing which he will be jailed, the Paris prosecutors' office said.

A judge still has to sign off on that deal, however.

Derambarsh said on Saturday that his client, who is at the start of a major tour, had agreed to undergo a full-time medical treatment for his addiction to avoid a relapse.

The bad boy of British rock – as famous for having dated supermodel Kate Moss as for his music – has repeatedly made headlines for drugs offences.

In 2012, he was thrown out of a luxury rehab clinic in Thailand after claims he was a bad influence on other patients and did not try hard enough to kick his heroin habit.

Member comments

Anonymous - 11 November 2019 at 11:34 CET

“went home then went out again to have a drink” I’ve never met an alcoholic who had ‘A’ drink, whatever their intentions might have been. There’s plenty of help for him if he wants it.

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The giant sails of the Moulin Rouge’s windmill fell off on Wednesday, due to what its management called a technical problem.

The windmill is a striking addition to the Paris skyline and helps make the cabaret one of the most recognisable in the world, as well as giving it its name (moulin is the French word for mill).

Here are five facts about the tourist hotspot:

The Cancan is English

The stock image of the Moulin Rouge is of glitzy girls in frilly dresses kicking their legs high.

Tourists today shell out more than €100 to see their performances, twice a day, all year round.

Few know that the dance known as the French Cancan was invented by an Englishman, Charles Morton, the founder of the British music hall.

On a trip to France, he discovered a wilder, noisier and altogether more risqué variation of the Cancan dance that was all the rage in Europe at the time.

Morton brought the dance, which he called the French Cancan, back to London – from where it crossed back to France under its new name.

Absinthe and art

Before it became the polished venue it is today, the Moulin Rouge was a den of iniquity.

From when it first opened in 1889, many artists passed through – and often passed out.

Dancers doubled up as prostitutes, mingling with patrons in a whirl fuelled by the potent spirit absinthe, known for generating a haze in the minds of drinkers and rendering them catatonic.

Such wild scenes were immortalised in the paintings of one of the most famous artists to have frequented the windmill: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

His La Goulue, among others, depict the interior of the club and its colourful characters in a riotous blur.

Singers

It wasn’t all dance. There was also plenty of song at the Moulin Rouge.

Iconic French singer and actor Yves Montand strutted the Moulin’s stage, which also welcomed some of America’s biggest crooners, including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

A-listers who have taken in the spectacle include Elvis Presley, who according to the Moulin’s website never came to Paris without dropping by, as well as Salvador Dali, the Beatles and Buster Keaton.

Hollywood treatment

The Moulin Rouge’s fame got a further boost after getting the Hollywood treatment.

In 2001, Australian director Baz Luhrmann adapted it to the screen with Nicole Kidman leading the cast as a dancer in the Oscar-winning film.

The film in turn was turned into a highly popular musical that has been running for years in the West End and Broadway.

Survivor

The Moulin Rouge has survived several calamities down the years.

In 1915 a fire reduced most of it to a smouldering ruin, with just the facade and a portion of the stage still standing.

In the 1990s it was on the brink of financial collapse when the courts stepped in and appointed an administrator, who turned it around.

Today it pulls in around 600,000 visitors every year, nearly double its intake in the late 1990s.