Unearthed footage of Pete Doherty queueing up for Oasis album where he sums band up
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It's been 25 years since Pete Doherty was interviewed while queueing to buy an Oasis album - and it's still TV gold.
The band's much anticipated third album Be Here Now was released on 21 August 1997, and Doherty was lining up to get his copy when he was interviewed by MTV.
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The Libertines frontman Doherty was an unknown 18-year-old stood among the hundreds of people queuing for the album - however, it became immediately apparent that he was a bit different.
Stood eating a croissant, he was asked how long he'd been queuing, to which he replied: "At least 17 minutes."
As for how he'd sum up Oasis, Doherty responded: "I subscribe to the Umberto Eco view that Noel Gallagher is a poet and Liam's a town crier.
"I've always seen that as a perfect combination."
The interviewer was naturally taken aback, presumably not expecting the Italian philosopher and writer to be name-dropped in the teenager's Oasis summary.
And asked if he could sum up Oasis with just one word, Doherty delivered again.
"Trousers," he quipped straight-faced, before taking another bite of croissant.
Many years later, having followed in the Gallaghers' footsteps and become one of the country's best known rockstars, Doherty explained that he wasn't actually queueing for the album and had in fact been looking for an opportunity to get on TV all along.
Speaking on Phil Taggart's Slacker Podcast, Doherty said: "I wanna clear this one up. I was working in the Trocadero centre [in central London] demonstrating wind-up frogs and I knew that there was something going on 'cause I saw TV cameras and photographers and there was a giant cardboard cut-out of Noel and Liam, so I went down there.
"I just wanted to get on the telly. Joined the queue, grabbed the cardboard cutouts, was doing these stupid 'please photograph me' things, jumping on the back of an open top bus with these cardboard cut-outs and then the next morning running to the newsagents thinking I was gonna be on the front of the newspaper with these cardboard cut-outs."
He continued: "I wasn't queuing for an Oasis album.
"My sister was a big Oasis fan, and I later tuned into them and decided they were brilliant, but at the time I was far more interested in getting photographed on the back of a bus with a cardboard cut-out."
Well, it's safe to say that when he got his moment in the limelight, he most definitely took it.
