Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

From tomorrow's Times, but already online, Nick Kent considers Amy Winehouse's addictions - and the public's addictions to seeing heroes crumble:

Like Winehouse and her dodgy entourage, the Stones sometimes found themselves being sold out by dubious druggy acquaintances in need of ready cash. The process was repeated in the Seventies, when individuals in the Sex Pistols’ cheesy retinue started selling photographs of Sid Vicious injecting himself. In the Eighties it went into a higher gear with the advent of Boy George and his heroin problem.

Since then the media has been unstoppable in its obsessive pursuit of falling music idols. There is one obvious reason for this: the general public has developed an insatiable desire for watching its favourite stars debase themselves further and further in the public forum.
[...]

Nobody has taken greater advantage of this cultural predicament than Pete Doherty, who has allowed himself to get dragged into some unholy pact with the tabloids in order to become fêted as the most infamous rock star of the millennium. In Doherty’s case, though, it’s understandable. He simply doesn’t have the musical talent to make it any other way.