Pete Doherty’s French cheese and booze diet that’s left him in ‘worse health’ than heroin – as he faces limb amputation and admits that ‘death is lurking’

Cult rocker Pete Doherty has enjoyed chart-topping success yet his music career has often been overshadowed by personal life turmoil – including class-A drug addiction and spells spent behind bars.

Yet he now faces a shock new health ordeal, with the former Libertines co-frontman revealing how he could need his toes amputated according to doctors’ warnings. 

The formerly-gaunt singer-songwriter, first hurtled to fame in the early 2000s and whose exes include supermodel Kate Moss, has been open in recent years about his change of diet – as well as his fears that ‘death is lurking’.

The musician has previously struggled with crack cocaine and heroin – yet has since moved on to indulging in cheese and wine, especially since a move to France.

While he has returned to the stage in the last couple of years, including acclaimed Libertines reunion tours, the toll of his past is evidently now having an impact.

Northumberland-born Doherty, now 45, this week told how doctors have warned him he is at risk of having his toes amputated amid his fight with Type 2 diabetes.

The singer was diagnosed with the chronic disease last year and has been performing from a chair on the last five dates of his European tour.

In a video shared online from a gig in Munich, Germany, Doherty provided his fans with the alarming health update.

Libertines star Pete Doherty, seen at the NME Magazine Awards at the Hammersmith Palais in February 2004, has been open about his well-publicised struggles with drug addiction

Doherty, now 45, is pictured here in Normandy in France in June 2021 – having moved across the Channel with his wife Katia de Vidas

He hit the headlines when tucking into a mammoth breakfast fry-up in Margate, Kent, in 2018 – managing to finish off the whole meal and thus getting it for free instead of a £17.50 bill

Pete Doherty and supermodel Kate Moss had an on-off relationship between 2005 and 2007 – the couple are seen here together in New York in September 2005

Doherty has told in recent years of his fondness for cheese and alcohol – but admitted doctors had warned him to cut back especially after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes

He said: ‘I saw the doctor today and he said you need to stay off your feet as much as you can otherwise you’ll lose your toes.’

Those with type 2 diabetes are at higher risk for many related health problems, including foot or leg amputation.

Doherty had previously announced his diagnosis last spring, saying: ‘I’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes – and at the moment, I’m lacking the discipline to tackle cholesterol.’

And he has been open about how his earlier indulgence in drugs had been replaced with alternative while still unhealthy appetites for food and drink.

He told the Guardian last year: ‘I gave up the main poisons and my health improved. Then you get told alcohol and cheese and sugar are just as bad and you were healthier when you were on heroin.’

He has described himself as ‘a bit of a glutton’, adding: ‘It’s not a joke. I’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes – and at the moment I’m lacking the discipline to tackle cholesterol.’

He also told documentary-maker Louis Theroux he was ‘a very sick man’ and did not see himself living long, believing that ‘death is lurking’.

In another interview, with the Evening Standard, he spoke of receiving some harsh words from his doctor – urging an overhaul of eating and drinking habits. 

Doherty is seen here at the We Love Homelands festival in Hampshire in May 2005, the year after his band the Libertines split up for the first time though they have since reunited

Pete Doherty and Katia de Vidas (pictured) got married in September 2021, two days after he had announced their engagement

Doherty said: ‘I have seen a liver doctor who says I need to change my diet – too much cheese, too much milk.

‘But the cheese is so good, that’s part of the reason I stay here. It’s a cholesterol and diabetes thing now, but there are tablets, it makes a big difference.’

The rocker has previously admitted that his larger figure is the result of tucking in to his guilty pleasure.

In 2021, Pete said he had ditched drugs and was instead indulging on cheese on toast and enjoying long lie ins after staying up for six days straight during his wildest years.

He told The Sun about his new lifestyle and favoured French cheese, saying: ‘I like Comté, Comté on toast. My guilty pleasure is sleeping.

‘For years and years, I would stay up for five or six days and then I would sleep for 24 hours, so now I love sleep. At the moment I’m quite clean. I stopped taking heroin and ketamine.’

He added: ‘I like experimenting, making cocktails with champagne, a bit of rum, orange juice, I’m coming across like a bit of an alcoholic, but I’m not — I like a nice glass of water.’

He was previously pictured in 2021 tucking into a baguette while strolling in France.

Kate Moss and Pete Doherty are pictured arriving at the Shockwaves NME Awards at Hammersmith Palais, west London, in March 2007 – they split in summer that year

Doherty, seen performing on stage in June 2022, has been living in France in recent years

Doherty relocated across the Channel with his wife Katia de Vidas several years ago and they have a daughter Billie-May who was born in May 2023 – while Doherty is also father to a son, 21, and a daughter, 13, from previous relationships.

Following his move to Normandy, a local resident was quoted as saying of Doherty: ‘Peter is no longer a bad boy – he’s relaxing, settling down and loving the goods things in life. 

‘We introduced him to pétanque and he’s fallen in love with the game. He often joins our club nights when we play.’

Mikael Grondin, owner of a local bakery, said: ‘He is always popping in for a bag of Bout de Choux, which is a pastry filled with cream. Maybe that’s why he’s put on weight but, don’t worry, these will be good for him.’

Doherty’s childhood was spent in various places across Britain including Dorset and Warwickshire, before forming the Libertines with co-frontman Carl Barat in London.

Their debut album Up The Bracket peaked at 35 in the UK album charts in 2002 but the band’s self-titled follow-up hit number one two years later, featuring singles such as Can’t Stand Me Now and What Became Of The Likely Lads.

Yet Doherty’s private life often made more headlines than their artistic achievements – including his first prison sentence, in September 2003.

He was given a six-month jail term, later reduced to two, after breaking into Barat’s apartment and stealing items including a guitar and a laptop – at a time when the group were touring Japan without him. 

Doherty is seen here outside Thameside Magistrates’ Court east London in April 2012 after admitting possession of heroin, crack cocaine, morphine and cannabis

Doherty and Carl Barat (right) were co-frontmen of the Libertines – the pair are pictured here during the group’s heyday, peforming at the Forum in Kentish Town, north London

Doherty was later given a 14-week prison sentence in April 2008 for breaching a probation order following previous drug and driving offences.

Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin shows the extent of his horrific drug addiction, his pained performances at the height of his illness and also contains film of him with his friend and lover Amy Winehouse.

The documentary was shot by his wife Katia de Vidas over a decade, and in upsetting scenes he is seen smoking drugs and writhing in the aftermath.

A documentary released in 2023, called Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin, laid bare his drug struggles including performances at the height of his addictions.

He was shown tying a tourniquet around his arm just ahead of injecting heroin, before scenes shoot to him shouting at a crowd of adoring fans: ‘On the one hand, thank you, on the other hand – f*** you’.

Speaking in the film, he said: ‘Hard drugs entered my life and slowly, slowly, and then very quickly, took control.’

He took heroin for the first time in 2002 when just 23, yet the addiction didn’t fully take hold until he found himself sweating and sick after a journey to Japan.

Doherty has since spent spells in rehab, including a six-week stint at Clouds House in Wiltshire beginning in September 2007.

The indie group has reunited and been touring in recent years – including this performance on the Other stage at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2022

Pete Doherty is pictured during the presentation of the documentary Peter Doherty: Stranger in my own Skin at the In-Edit Festival at the Calderon Hotel in Barcelona in October 2023

Earlier that year Doherty had announced on-stage at the Hackney Empire in east London his engagement to Kate Moss, who sang alongside him that night.

The couple first met two years earlier and were often seen together on London’s social scene during their on-off relationship before reportedly parting in July 2007. 

Doherty told Loaded magazine the following year: ‘We haven’t spoken since we broke up.

‘When you split up with someone, someone you’re seriously in love with, it takes a lot of time before you even realise that you’re upset. You know? It just hits you.’

The star has continued to have well-publicised problems with drugs, including a six-month prison sentence for cocaine possession in May 2011.

He was also fined in 2017 after being found with heroin in his car when arrested driving in Italy, then also handed in November 2019 in French capital Paris a three-month suspended prison term for cocaine possession and affray.

Earlier that year, when asked in a Guardian interview whether he would like to be clean of drugs, Doherty replied: ‘Yes, a part of me would. Just so I can feel things.

‘There are so many people in my life who deserve better. It really is a mental deficiency. I’d be a force to be reckoned with! I’d have money and self-respect and clean hands.’

Doherty has appeared before courts for various offences over the years – he is pictured here gestutirng at Thameside Magistrates’ Court in east London in March 2006

His recent live performances have included this one at the Columbiahalle in German capital Berlin on February 5 this year

He also spoke of how he had been pictured the previous year tucking into a mammoth fried breakfast in the Kent seaside resort of Margate, a £17.50 and 4,000-calorie fry-up offered for free for anyone managing to polish it all off.

On whether he did so for publicity, Doherty replied: ‘No, I was starving. I was skint, so I had a go at it. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t finished it.’

The Libertines first split in 2004, with Doherty performing solo as well as forming a new group called Babyshambles while Barat launched his own group Dirty Pretty Things.

But the Libertines reformed in 2010 and then released third album Anthems For Doomed Youth in 2015 followed by All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade in April last year. 

As well as Doherty’s current solo gigs, the Libertines are scheduled to continue touring the UK later this year – including concerts scheduled for the Dreamland amusement park in Margate in July before Halifax’s Piece Hall and Gunnersbury Park in west London the following month.

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