And a ?trail of destruction? left in his wake, according to the relatives of those seduced by his carefully crafted image as the bohemian poet, the tortured drug-taker. In fact, a glorification of drugs seems to follow Doherty wherever he stumbles.
Freddy had idolised Doherty since the age of 13. He would play the songs on his guitar, go to gigs. He?d met his hero and even got through three ?facsimiles? of Doherty?s trademark trilby hat.
The problems with Freddy also began at 13. This was when he gravitated towards the ?cool? crowd at school who were experimenting with drugs. Meanwhile Doherty?s music was a permanent fixture on his iPod.
?Freddy was sucked in by the glamour of it, and all that went with it: the drugs, the recklessness, the glamour espoused by Pete Doherty,? says James McConnel.
Freddy?s father won?t leap to the conclusion that it was all Doherty?s fault. So what he does say is perhaps all the more powerful for being so carefully thought-out.
?I don?t blame Pete Doherty for Freddy?s death. But I think he could have been a factor in Freddy?s spiral downwards. I think Freddy had a propensity to addiction, and the glorification of drugs fed into that.
?It was the one element of the Doherty scene that dragged Freddy down and took everything with him. It strikes me as extraordinary, when you think how hard it is to get through 13 to 16 anyway, that you have got some jerk glorifying rat poison on the side.?
There was, he says, ?nothing we didn?t try? to stop the drug-taking. But Freddy slipped away from his parents. At 17, he left the family home to study music in London, but dropped out of college to concentrate on his own material. After that he was in and out of rehab for his addition to heroin but had recently relapsed.
Worried, Mr McConnel phoned Freddy 10 times on the Friday, 10 times on the Saturday. Then they asked a friend to go round to the London flat.
?I will never forget it: her saying 'He?s unconscious on the bed. No, he?s dead. He?s dead.??
Robin Whitehead had a more intimate relationship with Doherty and his circle. She had been sucked into his world when she tried making a film about him, following Doherty for months in an attempt to gain access. She was ultimately successful: one night she filmed Doherty smoking crack cocaine ? before one of his friend?s handed her the pipe. The following day she was found dead of heroin poisoning at the flat of one of Doherty?s sidekicks.
Robin?s friend, Jake Fior, is frank. ?For [her] to have gone into that flat and not come out: it is not a tragedy, it?s an obscenity.?
Like Freddy?s father, Mr Fior talks about ?moral responsibility? and insists: ?Pete?s lifestyle choices are his own business, but he has a responsibility to keep them to himself.? Chillingly, he adds: ?If you were around these people, I?d defy you not to take drugs.?
Mark Blanco, an actor, was drawn to Doherty too. The fateful party he attended was at the Whitechapel home of Paul Roundhill, often described as Doherty?s literary agent. The flat was also a ?crack house?. But Mark Blanco didn?t go there for drugs. He knew Roundhill, whom he hoped would persuade Doherty to watch a play in which he, Mr Blanco, was acting. Doherty was not interested. Shortly before Mr Blanco?s fatal fall, there was a confrontation with the singer, his minder Johnny ?Headlock? Jeannevol and Roundhill.
Now Mr Blanco?s mother Sheila calls Doherty the Pied Piper: ?He leads the easily impressionable.?
Doherty and his companions denied any involvement in Mr Blanco?s fall; Doherty has insisted Mr Blanco was alone when it happened, and the Crown Prosecution Service has said there was ?insufficient evidence? to bring any charges. Mr Blanco?s friends and family were outraged when the decision was revealed last month.
CCTV footage, by the way, shows Doherty and his then-girlfriend leaving the scene, passing within feet of Mr Blanco?s body. Doherty and several friends then went on to a hotel where they wrecked a room and disturbed a wedding party.
About a week after that CPS decision, Doherty was jailed, for six months, for possession of cocaine. Miss Whitehead?s film of Doherty smoking crack gave him little choice but to plead guilty.
With Doherty likely to be out of prison before the end of August, Sheila Blanco was last week left wondering about the sentence, about what could have been done after her son?s death to curb the influence of Doherty, about whether others could have been saved: ?Why is he allowed to continue doing what he does? He got six months for possession of cocaine, when others would get three or four years.
?I saw in the local paper that a man got two-and-a-half years for a similar conviction, and it was his first offence. Judges seem to feel sorry for Doherty because he has this problem. I think it is scandalous that things have been allowed to carry on as they are.
?It is obscene that he is still able to make money. How can they justify it, given Doherty is a common denominator to all these deaths??
And when one reviews those 15 court appearances, with accompanying defence lawyers? pleas that this time, really, their client will clean up, it is hard not to marvel at the softness of the sentences, the brevity of the jail terms. (Just three since 2003.)
In 2003 his initial six-month jail sentence for breaking into a bandmate?s flat and stealing his belongings was later reduced to two months on appeal. In April 2008, after repeatedly breaching the terms of his probation, a four-month suspended jail sentence was finally activated. He served 29 days.
The list of court appearances and accusations is dizzying. In 2006, after a string of arrests for drug possession and driving offences, Doherty was picked up by the police twice ? in one day. And through it all the adulation of some fans ? the ones that are still alive, at least ? continues unabated.
Others, too, sing his praises. When Doherty?s band Babyshambles was signed to Parlophone, part of the EMI group, in 2007 for a long-term deal reported to be worth �1m, one senior record company executive hailed Doherty ?one of the best songwriters of his generation?.
Likewise, one reads of him acting in a new film, starring opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg, the admiring director assuring us Doherty is ?cultivated, literary, sincere [with] emotional depth?.
Yet there are those, however, who may feel less adulatory and who would share that description by Freddy?s dad that Doherty is indeed little more than ?some jerk glorifying rat poison?.
Mr McConnel, a successful composer, tries to explain why, in spite of his grief, he wants to talk about his son?s death. It?s a beautiful summer?s day in this idyllic corner of England. A breeze stirs the meadow. But nothing can change the fact that Freddy has now been laid to rest in a nearby church. It just makes it harder to bear ? too hard, in fact, for Freddy?s mother, the illustrator Annie Tempest, whose Tottering-by-Gently cartoons have amused Country Life readers for years.
?She can?t talk to you,? Mr McConnel explains. ?She?s in bits.?
He paces his kitchen, perches on the Aga. He is ?terrified of becoming a circus?, but feels it is his duty to talk to try to protect the living: Freddy?s friends and ?kids? like him. ?So adorable, so sweet; so defenceless, so vulnerable.?
Yes, he admits, every generation has its popular ?bohemians?. Now, though, ?It is so much more insidious: you have got the internet, television? We weren?t doing drugs at 13.?
Will today?s role model to so many young people change his ways? It seems doubtful. Back in 2006, a photograph of Doherty plunging a needle into the arm of an apparently comatose fan, Laura McEvoy, then 21, stunned the world. Doherty later escaped punishment after telling police that he was not injecting drugs into Laura; he was instead removing her blood to use for one of his ?blood paintings?, macabre works he creates by spraying blood from syringes.
?If the celebrity circuit and the justice circuit can?t stop him then there is little my voice can do,? says Laura?s mother Tess, a former pub landlady. ?Laura has been rebuilding her life,? she adds. ?But still has a way to go.?
Mr McConnel just hopes that Doherty one day really will clean himself up. ?He has a moral duty, to be a role model, to take responsibility. He will affect how young people think because they idolise him. But you can?t be arrested for a moral issue.?
He accepts that intervening with drug takers is of limited use when the addict doesn?t want to be helped. But perhaps it may induce just a twinge of guilt among some around Doherty when this grieving father says ruefully: ?Ultimately, it?s down to money, bums on seats. The hangers-on are not going to endanger their hanging-on jobs.?
Doherty is due out of prison on August 21. Five days later, he is scheduled to perform at the Leeds Festival and the Reading Festival on August 28 in front of thousands of music fans.
Last week, The Sunday Telegraph contacted EMI, the record group, for comment. Word came back: no comment would be offered.
In his Norfolk farmhouse, Mr McConnel is left with just the photographs of Freddy, and the order of service for a funeral, with some misspelt words from an angelic-looking six year-old: ?When peepol go to hevan teddy bears keep you from being shy sleeping in your bed the first night you arrive.?
Much too soon, Freddy has gone to discover the truth of that childish prediction. And in a world far from the drug-fuelled ?bohemia? of a feted pop star, a grieving father stifles his anguish.
?Oh, dear Freddy, why couldn?t you have waited??
Peter Lorre Myrna Loy Bela Lugosi Andie MacDowell Shirley MacLaine
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