I'll come back to this when I feel a little more articulate.

Surely there aren't any any more, are there?
There's lots of people whose lifestyles we may envy but I can't think of a single person that anyone but a buffoon patterns themselves after.

I'd call it 'a big, fuck off telly'.

Nice shirt, Rob. Don't swing on the chair so much next time.

Far too soft. There is too much of a consensus that the "Rock and Roll Lifestyle" is a given and that chavs doing crack in a bus shelter is "bad" but somehow Pete Doherty and Bez are folk heroes for honking the same filthy poison.

Music and drugs have always gone hand in hand but it is not a symbiotic relationship and we should not accept that to write about music is to write about drugs. (Yes, Q magazine, NME, I am talking to you!)

NME ran a feature 18 months ago called "the Summer of Shrooms". Idiotic, adolescent and dangerous.

Love the Shirt, glad you had the balls to wear it and talk about Amy Wino, oh the irony. I'm just a little dizzy from that swinging chair.

Obviously not enough war in the world to cover.

out of prison than in it comes into this equation?

Drugs usually poison the blood stream of music (with a small list of exceptions) and anyone who thinks that ingesting a cutla' tabs, puffing at a cutla' crystals or vacuuming a gee of coke up your nostrils will unlock some clandestine 'creative verve'' is living in an ivory tower anyway.
I think that is the main driving force behind anyone trying to emulate the habits of these talented individuals. Hopefully there fan base (namely Wine-o and P-Doh) will realise that there hazy-minded habits have only aided in there performances becoming downcast affairs.

Now, if you're a budding young conceptual artist it's a different matter all together. These boys 'do abit of meffin'' , and than carve a Gnome out of Caramac. BOB'S YOUR UNCLE. There's your inspiration.

In Unshod this month, where he does suggest the one piece of advice he would give the younger him would be "go easy on the dope" (I think he meant the drugs, rather than his fellow glimmer twin). Sits in my gullet a lot easier than the idiotic editors tales of drug and drink fuelled frenzies with the famous, spun out each month on the back page.
Its simple. Drugs (and alcohol, pop-pickers is possibly the worst) kill many many people. Successful and/or rich musicians can merely afford cleaner narcotics and better Drs, their copycat acolytes die in misery and poverty. Alex Hrvey, briefly name-checked in an adjacent strand effectively died of booze in his 40s.
I am not advocating complete abstinence from all depressants (they certainly ain't stimulants, whatever the jargon suggests to the contrary), just a bit more care. I enjoy a beer, wine or a malt as much as the next person but.......

....this country has developed a national pride in getting off its face, whether via alcohol or chemicals or herbs, that never used to be there. It always went on but at some point in the 90s it became acceptable to celebrate it. It's an obsession which has since become enshrined in popular culture via breakfast radio shows, lads magazines, girls magazines, footballers goal celebrations, freshers weeks that go on for months and the marketing of hangover cures.
The reason we don't have the so-called "continental cafe culture" that government ministers talk about is that in countries like Italy displays of insobriety are regarded as socially shameful. Over here on the other hand they've come to acquire a strange kind of prestige.

I cannot stand the hypocrisy at the BBC who will sack some people (Angus Deayton), reinstate others (Richard Bacon), and promote obvious-but-unmentioned druggy-type occasions (Radio 1)... But what really bugs me is that we out here know full well that cocaine use is widespread within an organisation like the BBC, and by high profile names as well.

I just wish the tabloids were more aggressive towards this issue and dupe/stalk/stitch-up anyone in the BBC they have an inkling might be on coke paid for by the public purse.

25 Years ago you went out, had two many, got pissed, got a hangover and moved on.

20 Years ago you went out, had an E a bottle of water got buzzed out of your mind and went to work.

5 years later it was Prozac to get over it.

It wasn't that much better then, just less of it. I remember down our road "Deals on Wheels" used to turn up on a Friday night for your weekend of partying.

Unfortunately its a British Isles Culture, that when you travel makes you embarressed about what you left behind.

Now its a blizzard of Coke and Pills. And they are the buzz of the day and weekend.

Whats really interesting is the amount of agression thats going with it. (my brother the Cop says its the Coke).

I really worry about my kids when they start going out. Because that aggression that the kids seem to have seems to be indiscriminate and where once it was easy to stay out of trouble now you can find yourself in the centre of a hurricane through no fault of your own.

10 years ago to see a girl pissed out of her brains puking her ring up and flashing her punany would have caused a stir, now its a badge.

When you go to the continent and see how its all so more civilised you wonder where did it all go wrong. And its wrong to say it was always like that.

I don't party like I did 20 years ago but I do "give it a lash" on a fairly regular basis, and its noticable that people are getting more trashed than before.

And now its turned into a rights of passage and a badge of honour.

I agree with Rob that Amy Winehouse and Pete "The Hat" Doherty are not role models but their cannonization by the celeb media is worrying.

The difference with the past ie The Stones etc is that they didn't have the celeb media making you wish you lived that kind of lifstyle on a 24hour 7 Days a Week basis.

Now you do. And even if you have been out there lived the life etc., when you have kids its different.

Now that just seems harder.

It' the media that holds these people up as role models and then they have the nerve to sell papers by feining horror at "rock star takes drugs". It's lazy journalism and how many media types indulge in drugs? Cocaine good but crack/ketamine/heroin bad?

Kids experiment with drugs because they are easily available and there is peer pressure to try them. Not because some poor sods sell a few records and get out of their heads on substances legal (alcohol), or illegal. If anything the pictures of Kate, Pete & Amy are more likely to put kids off drugs!

Drugs, obviously, have been fuel for creative types for years as Rob said, if they're are stupid enough to get caught all the time [and yes I'm talking about you Mr.Doherty] then they should get the same punishment as the man or woman in the street.

Early in the report, the identify Wino as snorting crack. Now that really is new. No wonder she looks permanently surprised.

to get to the nub of the issue. (And, as a public service, demonstrates how spliff makes even reasonably articulate people rather long-winded and boring to talk to).

...To put my two-penneth worth in (and thats not an overused statement!)...

We are a nation of either overworked (longest working hours in Europe, fact) people who want to get off the merry-go-round every Friday and Saturday night (some more so!) and will do anything to get that and keep on getting that; why would anyone seriously listen to politicians and go along with anything they legislate, especially seeing as most of them are just as bad as the rest of us joe public (and much worse sometimes!)...

Making drugs such a celebrity glamour thing to do is just another way of showing young people that some people are are weak, bored, have too much time and money to do whatever the feck they want, and of course we would all love to have a bit of that rather the banality of 9-5 work forced upon us - who wouldn't!

It'll only get worse, before it gets much much worse - and will probably never get better to be honest. People will do what the f*ck they want really, and certainly won't be dictated to by the powers that be, or indeed z-list celebs hell bent on showing us how much money that can spunk up the wall1

There i've said, i'll go back into my hermit cave now and cancel my Daily Mail subscription (ha!)

I see no ships.

Thorny issue this one, but that has never stopped me putting my massive size 14 in. The taking of drugs is a health risk, no one I think would argue against that. I am not convinced publicity of any celebrity in the media either encourages or discourages consumption. Price must play a large part, price of drink and coke come down, consumption goes up. Simple mathmatics. Celebritys I think reflect society not lead it. I do not know what the solution is, but it must start from government attacking drugs as a health problem - Fag any one?

Are their sentences more lenient or are they just getting caught more often because the constabulary recognise them more often?

Cocaine is everywhere these days though - I am constantly surprised by how often it is brought out in the most unlikely environments. I saw one chap openly carrying around a bag of charlie and a rolled up note going into a toilet cubicle in a motorway service station.

This truly is a rotten decade.

Having said that I rather enjoy getting wrecked up, but then I am very much a child of the nineties, and yes the people I socialise with probably take pride in our 'war stories' the next day. But then my Grandad and Dad have always been very proud about drinking heavily so I'm really not sure it's a generational thing.

Here's a theory: excessive drinking and pride in alcohol consumption used to be a working class thing which has been co-opted by the middle classes in the same way that football has been. Also, the move from our naiton from a manufacturing base to a service economy means that we all have more money to spend on doing it.

just think it's really unfair that people continue to take the piss out of Doherty, when he is clearly the most talented musician and poet we've had on these shores for the last forty years. He should be allowed to do what he wants regardless of the potential impacts, in case we stifle his creativity.

I risk making myself a pariah on this board, but I rather like him

Winston Churchill was pie-eyed from breakfast to Christmas throughout the Second World War and saved Europe from Nazi tyranny against all the odds. I think we should all take a leaf out of his book and start cracking open the brandy at the breakfast table. Beats a "smoothie" (whatever that might be).

Going back to David Hepworth's comments...

When I consider the national pride towards getting off your rack, it makes me feel peculiarly patriotic.

Obviously the reality of a nation wide 'happy hour'' isn't to be desired (girls with a wink of the 'under belly'' scrapping there knees on the pavement, screaming to the heavens because there ‘sooo facking out of it, bruv!''/ lads using the duck and dive on every bystander, crumpling the noses of every pedestrian that throws them a look because they've pissed there Top Shop jeans) but it gives us British a rather arresting (sometimes, literally) social identity.

For the municipal epitome of this drunken sprawling, come and visit Southend-on-Sea.

That bloke's claim that prison would be a good thing for Pete or Amy is laughable, whatever caption Sky choose to try and give him some credibility with. So let's lock up all the drug users for their own good. How many prisons do you want to build? And perhaps you could explain how that would stop soft drug users graduating to hard drugs inside? Ridiculous.
Of course what he and the tabloids (and Sky, interesting how she tried to dengrate Rob's replies, as he was clearly off message about the whole thing, shocking!) want is somebody to blame for the culture they eagerly encourage at every turn. Nothing like someone to pillory, especially when they can encourage the habit by paying druggy mates to fit them up with camera phones. Rob is right - what evidence is there to show fans of those two take drugs because their heroes do?More likely they can see how drugs are affecting the quality of their work. And who wants to end up looking like Pete D?

that because you're in the spotlight, you've got to be a role model? Earn your living playing footie? Woe betide you if you get sloshed one night. Earn your living playing guitar? Woe betide you if you get pictured doing coke. Earn your living playing Hamlet? Woe betide if you get caught with a lady who isn't your wife.

If you want to get pissed, high or laid it's your business. I'm adult enough to have a view on it and not to copy your "example" just because you're a celebrity. I don't need some sanctimonious and often hypocritical journalist sensationalising your night out, your problem, your life.

We're engaged in a controversial war. The Government wants to spend £30bn of our money on an ID card system that plainly won't work. We have the worst illiteracy rate in Europe. The national debt is at record high. We don't have a policy let alone practical measures for energy generation when the oil runs out. Shoot the sodding journalists who seem to think that celebrity social lives qualify as important.

One of the reasons I like The Word magazine is that it gives space to people like Paul Du Noyer who recognise the brilliance of records like this:

Amy's got talent! Enough for one half-decent single, anyhoo. The rest of it is in the dumper.

Now celebrities are being pilloried for waving the flag for booze Britain.

Graeme ''Dot-Eyes'' Reports

I`ve came straight down to write a comment, then I`ll read the other postings. I am proud to say I`ve never taken any drug with the exception of alcohol. Drugs have never appealed to me, but it`s a choice thing and if you decide to take them then thats up to you. Drugs and music (e.g Amy Winehouse - good and Pete Doherty - bad) go hand in hand and they always will, this cannot be argued. Drug abusers in general get way too much sympathy in my view especially form the music press, and I`ll use the word `choice` again. `Celebrity` abusers will continue to milk the publicity (good/ bad, is there a diiference?), this again cannot be argued. Are we too soft on them? Oh yes. Any drug user (alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, etc, etc)should be aware of their addiction and be prepared to confront it. If they don`t, they deserve whatever comes their way. If they do, then talk about it and tell us how damaging and stupid drug abuse really is. As someone with two impressionable children I`m acutely aware that my opinion may at some time in the future be shoved down my throat God forbid. Stop glorifying these people, stop glorifying drugs as well.

Slow news days are good thing, I think. It means that there is less bad stuff happening in the world that day.

but somehow it seems to have become socially acceptable to break the law with drugs, for everyone, and the rest of us let it happen. I once shopped a collegue to the police for drink driving and I was made to feel like some sort of leper. Different story if he'd killed your child whilst under the influence though wouldnt it?

incredibly slow news day

1 alcohol
2 nicotine
3 football

other drugs dont even come near to the harm and impact on society as those.
as someone else put into words a few years ago, what i have long believed...

>>
I think that Bright Bill that was funded by the breweries to get people in their pubs. The breweries suddenly started doing alcopops and cleared the tables and chairs out and put music on. What that meant was instead of there being a club in Hereford playing house, it went back to 30 people in Hereford travelling somewhere else. I think that killed it, the pub chains. And now they're the ones that are paying for it with a nation of binge-drinking teenagers, when you could have had a nation of E-takers, but not causing any problems. Having a great time. Now they're stuck with every casualty in every major city with glassings, stabbings and policemen being sorted. No one got sorted at Sunrise and it's the same kids. Without doubt there was a definite ‘boardroom' decision taken by people. It's not a conspiracy theory, but they said, ‘we've gotta get them out of these fields and back into our pubs, how we gonna do this?'
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I once informed a venue owner of an artist who was clearly unfit to be driving due to alcohol and who I knew was driving home - they're weren't interested.

Aside - is it me, or did that news clip at the start of the article have more than a slight stench of Brass Eye about it with the WALL OF DRUGS SHAME!