Wednesday 15/12/04 Pete Doherty @ The Bandwagon, Liverpool

John announces to baying punters that their fractured hero will be along shortly. Well, in forty odd minutes. Half cheers-half groans. The perfect Pete response, then. Expectation has been heaped on his shoulders once more. Support bands The Little Flames (Deltasonic) and The 747s (Island) pulled out at the last minute due to bereavement and back injury respectfully, which has left the line up gaping bare. The Jones’s are not nearly as poor as a previous Gigwise correspondent would have you believe, but are no match for the youthful zest of the Flames and 747s - or the macabre expectation of a genuine rock star experience.

By the time Pete is wheeled onto stage it’s past two o’clock and the DJ’s been filling in for two and a half hours. The crowd have been doing some filling in of their own, involving stomachs and beer. For his part, Pete has necked lots of sleeping pills to wake up. He greets the predictable flurry of shrill marriage proposals with his best Cilla Black Blind Date impression. Belatedly, following increasingly desperate encouragement to “Play something!”, he melts into ‘What A Waster’ and everyone sings along.

It is plainly apparent, however, that we’ve been waiting only to witness one of Pete Doherty’s more ghoulish performances, harking back to his impromptu pre-prison gigs in places like Islington’s Hope & Anchor. The former Libertine is absolutely wrecked. But, just like the bit of your brain which manages to get you home somehow when you’re hopelessly legless, Pete retains an innate ability to vaguely function, whatever his condition, when he’s put in front of a crowd. He manages to get through a dozen or so songs in between harmonica auditions and drum lessons. There’s a slurry of Babyshambles numbers, including a particularly good one using reality TV imagery (but after the ‘32nd of December’, even Pete has the decency to note, “What a disaster that was.”); a couple of sing-a-long Libertines tunes; and one he “wrote yesterday, but it hasn’t got a middle eight”. It displays classic contradictory Doherty denial, “You can’t put doubt on me/ Cos I’m mostly clean/ I know what you say about me/ And I mostly agree.”

But mostly he just staggers around looking generally confused. Ten to three, and he’s to be found behind the drum kit doing a solo. Quarter past three, Pete concludes set closer, ‘Time For Heroes’, goes into a few seconds of ‘Don’t Be Shy’ before abruptly taking off his guitar and optimistically asking, not for the first time, “We’ve done alright in the circumstances, haven’t we?” He maintains a pretence of caring - but only enough to fall apart in public, rather than in the corner of a darkened room. The “circumstances” are: there used to be a burning light within Pete, but now it can only be seen to dimly flicker on occasion. Now, the dominant light in his life is one that’s held up for him so he can ignite and internally combust. The process has successfully reduced expectation. “At least he turned up,” people mutter as the spill into the cold early morning. Four o’clock, and Pete’s being bundled into another taxi by his two cronies having just answered the question posed by one of his covers tonight, ‘Where’s The Crack?’

The ever diminishing returns of Peter Doherty Carry On Diminishing.