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And Finally Artist News
Pete Doherty sings (eats really fast) for his supper (breakfast)
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 22 August 2018
Pete Doherty ate a really big breakfast yesterday. Huge it was. It was the Dalby Café in Margate’s ‘Mega Breakfast’, and the Libertines guy stuffed it down his neck in under 20 minutes, meaning he got it for free.
How big can a breakfast be though? Well, this one consists of: four eggs, four rashers of bacon, four sausages, a quarter pound beef burger, some hash browns, a load of mushrooms, way too many chips, a few onion rings, a bit of bubble and squeak, baked beans or tomatoes (your choice), two slices of bread and a mug of tea or coffee. And it’ll cost you £17.50 if you fail to eat it in the required time.
Doherty, who is currently renovating a hotel he and his bandmates own in Margate, sat down for the feast after “one hell of a weekend”, café owner Mark Ezekiel tells the Isle Of Thanet News.
The musician chose a table outside to eat his meal, which is so large that it is served on a metal tray. Suspicious, Ezekiel says that he warned Doherty that he would be watched on CCTV and not to feed any of it to his dog to qualify for getting it for free.
Aghast, Doherty apparently responded, “I’ve paid £4.5k for that dog, I’m not going to feed him fried food”.
Somewhere between ten and 20 people have completed the ‘eat this big breakfast quickly’ challenge since it was launched in 2003. The exact number is not known, as a leader board in the café recording the achievements of past speedy breakfast eaters was accidently wiped clean in 2010. Just six people have managed it since then though. The last in 2013, in a time of eighteen and a half minutes.
Doherty cleaned his plate in nineteen and a half minutes, only just scraping through. Apparently he made an early error that almost scuppered his chances. Ezekiel explains to Kent Live: “He wolfed down two thirds in six or seven minutes. Usually we get people who eat quite a lot at first, but then they hit a wall and can’t go on anymore. He surprised everyone. He smashed it”.
In the name of journalism, I would now go and take up the challenge myself and report on my own efforts, but I’m vegetarian. I will lobby the vegan café up the road to pump me full of grain and tofu though.
As well as planning to open their own hotel in Margate and headlining the final day of local festival Wheels & Fins, The Libertines also recently sponsored the town’s football team. Their logo is now emblazoned across the chests of Margate FC’s players.
The team’s General Manager Deny Wilson recently told the BBC that he was “THRILLED” by the “pioneering partnership”. Although the band are not the first to sponsor the team. They were sponsored by Bad Manners in 1996 – frontman Buster Bloodvessel also being a hotel owner in the town at the time. Bloodvessel’s breakfast eating achievements are not known.
