Pete Doherty sings ‘Dirty Old Town’ in Ukrainian in rare TV appearance

Musician’s performance came on one-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion

Pete Doherty made a rare TV appearance on Channel 4 comedy talk show The Last Leg on Friday night (24 February).

The Libertines frontman, 43, performed The Pogues’ 1985 classic “Dirty Old Town”, changing the one of the lyrics to “brudne stare misto”, which is Ukrainian for “dirty old town”.

At the end of the song, he smiled and shouted “slava Ukraini!”, meaning “glory to Ukraine”.

Friday was the one-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The number of Ukrainian civilians killed in the war with Russia could be as high as 100,000, with both sides suffering tens of thousands of military casualties.

Millions of Ukrainians have either been displaced or left homeless 12 months on since Russian tanks rolled across the border.

During Doherty’s appearance on the show, he also told an anecdote about hosting two Russian artists at his London home.

“When they were in London I put them up,” he said.

“They locked me in their flat and that was part of their installation but they didn’t tell me. It was terrifying.

“It was in this big brutalist style flat and there were no windows. I couldn’t get out. They filmed it all and transmitted it to the gallery.

“That was their installation, me freaking out in the flat. It got really good reviews though.”

Last year, a documentary chronicling Dpherty’s addiction issues at the height of his fame premiered at Mipcom in Cannes.

The 90-minute film, Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin, came from more than 200 hours of footage filmed over a 10-year period by his partner, the director-musician Katia deVidas. Read more about it here.