The Drugs don't work. Nor does prison...

A little while back DK suggested, with customary use of base, vitriolic English, that prison may not be the best place to put tedious, scabby, wasted *rocker* Pete "Pissing my talent up against the wall with crack" Doherty. What with prisons being awash with junk and drugs and all.

And here, from the Sun of all places, we have proof that he was right. Not least because Doherty is sharing a cell with a dealer...

Shut the Fuck up about... Amy Winehouse!

Bag lady in waiting Amy Winehouse wins Grammys but can’t attend the award ceremony. Why? Because she’s a fucking junkie. End of story. So let’s hear no more about this woman until there is actually something newsworthy.

I’m sorry, I'm being misnathropic and grumpy this morning, but I am sick to fucking death of hearing about Amy pissing Winehouse. And I can’t be the only one. Regardless of whether she is talented or not*, these endless bloody stories of her wandering around London, stoned off her saggy tits, are dull, tedious and utterly repetitive. It was bad enough when it was Pete "pasty faced cunt" Doherty wondering around like a gormless cretin, but at least he wasn’t milling around bleating about his "Blake, incarcerated." Fuck off, Amy, you dreadful, unwashed moron. Your Blake is in prison for perverting the course of justice in his GBH case. It is difficult to have too much - or, indeed, any - sympathy for him.

But I’m railing against Amy unfairly here. With all the attention she gets, it is no wonder that she plays up to the media. If you give someone lost in the self-absorption of drug addiction a microphone to the nation, then they are going to take it. So it is actually all those news outlets who bang on about the Winehouses and Dohertys of this world that are the problem. And they’re only playing up to the cult of celebrity in this country that the public seems to love so much.

Ultimately, the cult of celebrity in this country is bad enough, without us being absorbed in the petty dramas when one of these "celebrities" develops an addiction to a particularly nasty drug. The next story we should hear about Winehouse is when (and if) she beats her crack habit. In the meantime, leave the junkie without the oxygen of publicity inflating her car accident of a life out of all reasonable proportion.

*I don’t think she is, but that could just be musical taste. Although I quite liked her version of Valerie. In terms of junkie rock stars, I favour the music of Pete Doherty. Although I think they both deserve a sound kicking. Not volunteering to administer that kicking myself, though. That pungent aroma of sweaty performer mixed with stale crack cocaine would cause my stomach to curdle.

Scoop of the Year - Pop Star Takes Drugs!

The Sun (yes, I have been trawling their website this morning) has this out and out scoop as their lead story – pop star goes into re-hab! By Christ, this is the story of the year! Never before has a pop star gone into re-hab! This is completely and utterly unprecedented! In no way does Pete Doherty, for example, spend half his time in rehab and the other half in court* owing to his crack habit.

In order to celebrate this scoop, The Sun goes into graphic detail about the problems Williams has. Literally – graphic detail. They have pictures of pills, cigarettes, Red Bull cans and espressos in case anyone is so fucking dumb that they don’t know what those items look like. But they also list exactly what is causing Robbie Williams’s problems:

“The singer finds it impossible to get to sleep until 4 or 5am due to insomnia and is on sleeping pills. He is hooked on the powerful and controversial anti-depressant Seroxat, which has been linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers. And daily he gets through an incredible 36 super-strength double espresso coffees, 60 Silk Cut cigarettes and around 20 cans of energy drink Red Bull.”

That list sounds like an average day to me. But joking aside, 20 cans of Red Bull, 60 fags and 36 double espressos may well be the cause of the insomnia. I’m no doctor, but I am guessing that pumping your body full of caffeine is going create sleeping problems. Maybe I am missing the point here, but Williams is causing his own sleeping problems. Perhaps cutting down on the coffee and other stimulants may, in the long term, negate the need for sleeping pills. I appreciate I am being deliberately obtuse, but sometimes it is worth pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Also, the observation that Seroxat is linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers is pointless and stupid – it is merely going to make anti-depressants more of a taboo. Of course anti-depressants are linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers – the teenagers taking Seroxat are likely to be fucking depressed – hence the need for anti-depressants. You can link Seroxat to suicidal tendencies, but you probably need to stress that they are not the cause of those suicidal tendencies.

Anyway, that is an aside. Let’s get back to the problems of poor Robbie. The Sun identifies the cause of Williams’s addictions and other woes:

“He suffered agonies as Take That’s reunion tour became one of the biggest pop events of 2006. Their comeback single Patience went straight in at No1 and stayed there for six weeks. Their new album Beautiful World also went straight to No1 and has sold 1.5 million copies.”

Agonies? Agonies? Fucking hell, I would have thought mild disappointment would be the most Take That doing better than him would have caused. I would equate agony with cancer, or some other terrible disease. Perhaps a crippling bereavement would warrant the word “agonies”. Not his former band doing better than him in the charts. Ultimately he fucker lives in luxury, and has had a successful career that most people can only dream of. If the success of the reformed Take That is really the cause of Williams’s problems, he should get a bit of frigging perspective on his life.

I am sure that Robbie Williams is suffering, and addiction is a terrible thing. But it is also about personal responsibility. Everyone suffers from disappointments and setbacks in life, not everyone gets themselves addicted to prescription drugs and other vices. Sure, Williams has made a positive step by going into rehab to overcome his problems, but I cannot bring myself to be too sympathetic. As harsh as it sounds, he had the choice to become addicted – as difficult as it may have been to resist the slippery slope to addiction – so in spite of The Sun’s surprisingly sympathetic treatment of someone they would normally class an evil druggie, I think Williams has only himself to blame. Fundamentally Williams is responsible for his own behaviour, and the fact that he has made the wrong choices does not make me think he should become a tragic figure warranting our sympathy.

*Believe it or not, Doherty used to be a rock star before he became a celebrity drug addict. I remain a big fan of The Libertines. However, most of the music he has made since leaving/being sacked from that band has convinced me that he should focus on his real job – getting loaded, and then arrested.