This email is doing the rounds. Hilarious if true, hilarious even if it's not true.
KOH
The Samaritans have today recruited 600 extra staff to deal with an
expected surge in calls as troubled fans come to terms with today's
revelations about rocker and teen icon Pete Doherty. In a surprise press
conference today, the men behind Doherty's career reveled themselves - and
admitted that the Libertines, Babyshambles, the tales of drug use, the
armed robberies and the affair with supermodel Kate Moss have all been part
of one of the largest hoaxes in British history.
The men behind the scandal - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, who were
themselves infamous popstars under the name The KLF - admitted how they
plucked a young Buddy Holly impersonator Doherty from obscurity and made
him a media darling. "It was a meant to be a quick stunt to show the
frailties of our celbrity-obsessed culture," said Cauty, adding, "there are
too many people who are famous despite their lack of talent, usefulness and
basic intelligence. We wanted to do something that held a mirror up to
that" Mr Drummond called Britain's pop-culture "sick" and said that
although he regretted the hurt caused to Doherty's many fans, he hoped
"this incident taught us all some important things".
In a prepared statement, the two men - famous for many other pop pranks,
including the famous burning of GBP1million on a remote Scottish island -
detailed how they manipulated the British Press into making Doherty an
icon. Doherty - whose real name has now been revealed to be Trevor
McDermott - was making a living as a part-time Buddy Holly impersonator in
the Cornwall holiday circuit. He began a short-lived affair with the singer
of a well known 80's rock band, and was introduced to Drummond and Cauty at
a backstage party in London's West End. The men described how a drunken
McDermott amused them with his slurred singing and frenetic dance
movements, and how they then realised that this would be the perfect "dupe"
for a plan they had been hatching for some time.
"The plan involved proving three theories we have about current British
society," reads the statement. "The first is that in the so-called
"alternative" scene, everybody is too scared of missing The Next Big Thing
to worry about anything else." To prove this, some session musicians were
provided to compose the rest of the "band", The Libertines, and rumours of
exposive gigs were leaked to the media. "The gigs in question never
actually took place, but we didn't have to worry about that. Soon the buzz
around The Libertines was so frenetic, journalists were falling over
themselves to claim to have been at the front of every single fictional
gig." Within weeks, The Libertines were appearing on magazines and
receiving record offers. Gigs sold out in minutes, while their first album
"Up The Bracket" flew off shelves.
Feeling that their first point had been proved, Drummond and Cauty moved to
their second theory: "We feel that our culture has become an enormous soap
opera. We don't care what a person thinks, or creates, or contributes We
just care about what they do in their normal lives. Especially when it's
something they shouldn't be doing."
To demonstrate this, the men co-ordinated a number of scandals. First was a
robbery staged in the house of one of the band members. When this took
place, McDermott (aka Doherty) was unknown outside of the alternative music
scene. An incident of this calibre was sufficient, however, to catapult
McDermott onto the front page of every major national tabloid. "One day we
has just another singer, the next day he was 'Disgraced Celebrity Rocker',
and he hasn't been out of the papers since". Further revelations about drug
abuse and violence kept McDermott and The Libertines on the front pages for
months.
One thing that took even Drummond and Cauty by surprise was the affair with
model Kate Moss. "That was not something that we planned or had any
involvement. Whether she knew about the hoax is something we are not party
to. We have never had any contact with Miss Moss." However, this was the
boost their project needed - where the drugs and crime had made McDermott a
media sensation, the relationship with one of fashion's most famous women
catapulted him into the world of true celebrity. "While we had not planned
this, it certainly proved our point. There are many superior artists in the
country today, but they never appear in Heat or The Sun, because they don't
have the words 'boyfriend of Kate Moss' after their name."
Despite this boost, the project began running into a major setback for
Drummond and Cauty. Just as they were preparing to enter the final phase of
their scheme, Doherty decided that he wanted to part company with them, the
fake band, and begin seriously recording music. He stopped all contact with
the men, and threatened legal actions if any details were leaked to the
press. "We were upset at the apparent failure of our grand project, and
also at the monster we had created in Pete Doherty. Our third theorem -
that 'If enough people say that a piece of s*** is a bar of gold, we'll
believe it's a bar of gold' - seemed to have been beyond salvation.
Fortunately, at that point Pete released the first Babyshambles album."
In the time since then, Drummond and Cauty have been locked in a vicious
legal battle, which was eventually settled out of court by the discovery of
a videotape showing McDermott singing "Peggy Sue" at a Butlin's in Devon.
Publicly, McDermott still strongly denies all charges. How this affects the
future career of Pete Doherty remains to be seen
