RICHEY ISN'T PETE

We've never seen quite how the parallels were supposed to work that suggested Pete Doherty was the new Richey Manic; now James Dean Bradfield has made a polite request to stop people confusing the two:

And, speaking from the Cardiff studio in which he part-recorded his solo material, he said he had no advice for the former co-frontman of The Libertines because he "didn't feel qualified".

"It's impossible to give that kind of advice," he said.

"I would never have any advice to give to anybody who is close to Pete Doherty or to Pete Doherty himself because I don't feel qualified, because we really didn't know what to do ourselves with Richey.

"We've re-traced our steps in terms of what happened to Richey so many times and at the end of the day Richey was surrounded by people who cared about him and who were quite sensible and still we couldn't help."

It might not have escaped Bradfield's notice that he's doing press for his first solo album, and all anyone still wants to talk about is Richey.

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