‘Am I surprised Pete Doherty is still alive? No, he’s too smart to die’: the Libertines on feuds, friendship – and their unlikely sober reunion

It’s 20 years since they topped the charts – then fought, stagnated and imploded. But now Pete Doherty and Carl Barât are back. Was it easy recording together again? Depends who you ask …

I have done battle with the Libertines three times over the past 19 years. Only I haven’t, not really. Two of the interviews were with Pete Doherty for projects away from the band that made him famous: Babyshambles and the Puta Madres. The first was in a mangy London hotel bedroom in 2005 – he was sitting on a motorbike, revving it up, when he was awake. Much of the time he was asleep. He was 26, surrounded by drugs paraphernalia, and had daubed “ROUGH TRADE” on the wall in his own blood. Last time we met, four years ago, he was in better nick and more sociable. That said, he was still smoking crack, threw a punch that just missed me, kissed my forehead by way of apology, and took me to his wreck of a house where he tried to flog me his possessions. He still had something about him: a wasted brilliance and surprising charm that he failed to hide, despite his best efforts.

As for his soul brother and sparring partner Carl Barât, I met him in 2006 when he was also recovering from the Libertines. Barât had just formed Dirty Pretty Things and the band was releasing its first album. He was quiet, likable, and profoundly depressed. Barât talked a lot about “Evil Carl”, the self-destructive side of him that had a downer on life. In a different way, you worried as much for the future of Barât as for Doherty.