Preston's a great British new city
After this week's shock announcement that Dirty Pretty Things are to split, the band tonight perform their first show in what is now their farewell tour. In contrast to his former Libertine bandmate, Pete Doherty, frontman Carl Barat was always the sensible one. But, in one of his last interviews before the split, Judith Dornan finds he's no stranger to chaos either
It's taken a while to get hold of Dirty Pretty Things frontman and former Libertine Carl Barat for this interview.
Originally scheduled for 3.45pm, it's nearly 4.15pm before the PR man, who I've called after numerous fruitless communings with Carl's answerphone, puts me through.
Once on, he seems vague and monosyllabic, grunting: "I'm in bed," when I ask where he is. At home? "Yeah." Where is home? "Muswell Hill." Oh, my grandparents used to live there. "Lucky them, it's not a bad manor."
Barat was always the sensible Libertine. While guitarist Pete Doherty's life spiralled into headlines, from breaking into Carl's flat to his trainwreck relationship with Kate Moss, Barat's press was mostly more serious mentions in music publications.
However, Anthony Rossomando, who replaced Pete in the Libertines and followed Carl into Dirty Pretty Things, admits they "caned it from Day One" right up until the second DTP album.
And with the shock announcement two days ago that Dirty Pretty Things are to split, perhaps Carl's state of mind is now clearer.
He has suffered depression and this year, he found himself in the tabloids after his hospitalisation with acute pancreatitis, a condition which can be caused by excessive alcohol abuse and which he now believes was a bad reaction to mixing prescribed steroids with a wild lifestyle.
The episode forced him to calm down. He says: "I'm all better, I've made a full recovery thanks to the pious lifestyle I adopted for a while."
But he admits they still push the boat out: "Quite a lot... I don't know how. He laughs. "There's a bit less caning it sometimes. I dunno, it's kind of all or nothing really, for the caning it. Maybe it's in the genes.
"I think that's the reason I had to go to hospital because of my inability to cane it and take steroids, which is a bad combination."
He's clearly recovering from something of a wild night, seeming half asleep, mumbling so much I keep missing what he says and getting tetchy when asked to repeat things.
I ask what he did last night and he laughs: "I don't know! At 7 o'clock this morning, I was still sitting at the piano and everyone else had gone. I don't know what that means."
One thing that gave him balance was his long-term relationship with Preston singer and model Annalisa Asterita. They lived together for five years and Carl was once a familiar sight around Preston, frequenting the Warehouse and other haunts.
He says: "I like Preston. Yeah, that was a funny old place. I kinda liked it - especially Scrumptious and John Kay's fish restaurant! Put that in!"
But Carl's life seems full of partings, Annalisa among them. He says bluntly: "We've split up. But, you know, it might not be permanent split."
When was it? He seems to deflate slightly: "Oh, a couple of months ago." Will you get back together? "Well, we'll see." He trails off.
They remain friends. "The best," he says firmly. "She might come to that gig and we might go and have a knees-up somewhere. I think we might organise a bit of a party because we had a lot of friends around that area when we were together."
Preston must have been a sharp contrast to the lifestyle he was living elsewhere as The Libertines exploded. But he sounds vague. "Not really, well, yeah, in a way, I guess.
Then suddenly energised, he enthuses: "The thing about Preston is it's a great British city. A great British new city and a lot of the new cities, they sweep up a whole range of localities and, in doing that, kind of encompass so many different bands of the spectrum. A bit like Brighton and Hove but Preston's got a bit more range."
Preston has more range than Brighton and Hove? "I think so, yeah. And it's good, Preston doesn't try and involve the seafront in its citizenship, that would have been quite a stretch. That's a bridge too far!"
Is he looking forward to being back? He mumbles something I can't catch, then, when I ask, snaps testily: "SOMEBODY got MURDERED there, shall I speak really slowly?"
His mood softens as he recalls happier events. "I think we did a little gig in a record shop." He's referring to a packed-out appearance in Action Records, on Church Street, when Dirty Pretty Things first emerged.
He admits: "I still love Preston as a town." He apes a cliched advert voiceover. "When I met Annalisa in Preston, I often used to go to Scrumptious for a salad or a panini."
I ask where they met - but, again, his answer is so mumbled, I can't hear. He repeats tetchily: "We met at a gig in LEEDS. It's probably my filthy southern dialect. I can't remember what else I said. No, I've forgotten."
Last year, he and Annalisa were reported to have wed at Glastonbury Festival. Barat laughs raspingly: "In a sense... and not a very legal sense!
"They have this wedding chapel, don't they, at Glastonbury? We got there and it was closed! So we got (Charlatans frontman) Tim Burgess to perform a kind of ceremony in the mud. For all I know, he could have been rewriting the Magna Carta."
Recording of Dirty Pretty Things second album, Romance at Short Notice, was an arduous process. Carl says: "It was very frustrating. It took a long time to get everyone (yawns) on the same page really." But he likes it now? "Yeah! Now it's done."
Libertines comparisons seem to rile him. "Obviously, I'm going to write like half The Libertines, because I was in 'em!
"I love the songs and, in hindsight, I love the album but it wasn't made the way I'd make a record in general or the way I'd make a record again."
It's reportedly the most personal he's made. He says guardedly: "Some of it. I think that was said about Hippy's Son really. Yeah, that's pretty personal. There you go, bingo."
Carl rarely discusses his parents, saying only that their hippy lifestyle was not the most secure background. So why write about it now?
"Just..... because I haven't done it before." Have you played it to your parents? "Yeah, I have actually." And what did they think? "I don't know, I left the room. Well, it would be a bit awkward, wouldn't it?"
