Though it was drugs that ultimately severed his alliance with the singer, Barat has never claimed himself to be a particularly clean-living soul. But who knows? Maybe I’m just saying this now because there is a lot of general fatigue around. We are all incredibly tired.”Barat grew up on a council estate in unpretty Basingstoke. His father was an artist, his mother a CND activist and self-confessed hippie. They split up soon after his birth, and Barat now describes his childhood as an unhappy one, “for various reasons I’m not about to disclose to you”. He started taking drugs at the age of 10, first marijuana and then, by 14, acid. Nevertheless, he was a good student, leaving school with 11 GCSEs, and went on to study drama at Brunel University.

I do fear it could ultimately be a hindrance to our band, and sometimes I do worry that we are heading towards a kind of premature self-destruct as a result. We’re trying to move forward, but everybody wants us stuck in the past. “I’m not pleased by it, it doesn’t titillate me, and it’s insulting to the rest of the band,” he says. “How would you like it?” Hammond chips in: “It is frustrating, yes I can’t see why people won’t just leave it alone. Not that I’m saying Pete is Jade Goody….”Nevertheless, it’s a malignant shadow that will not recede.

Likewise, from “Blood Thirsty Bastards”, this: “You’re a legend in your mind/ But a rumour in your room.” Other songs suggested bitterness at his old friend from their titles alone: “Dead Wood”, “Doctors and Dealers”, “The Enemy”. Barat denies it all.”Look,” he says, “I’m not out for notoriety the way Pete so clearly is, and so I’d never air personal feelings in lyrics I wouldn’t be that insensitive And anyway, if I wanted to be notorious, I could [be] Let’s face it, it’s hardly difficult But do I want to be Jade Goody? I don’t think so. “I was asked a lot of stupid, ignorant questions,” he mutters. “And everyone was convinced the album was all about him, about Pete.” He snorts.

“It wasn’t.”He rejects the suggestion that the track “Bang Bang You’re Dead” – with its line, “I gave you the Midas touch/ You turned round and scratched out my heart” – could be about Moss’s latest boyfriend. All anybody wanted from him were his recollections of the by now vastly notorious Doherty. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I snapped it up.”He enrolled Powell and Rossomando from his former group, and Dirty Pretty Things was born. A few months later, his close friend Didz Hammond (formerly the bassist of The Cooper Temple Clause) joined, and the quartet knocked out Waterloo to Anywhere, a gleefully shambolic album of Libertines-esque punk rock, in weeks.Barat now wanted to be accepted on the strength of his new music But that was never going to happen. Nobody cared about the music, and so Barat, busy fighting demons of his own, disappeared from view He had no idea what to do next.