The lovely and talented Pete Doherty has been subject to the usual onslaught of rumours lately, but this time, it’s not his love life that’s being discussed. The Sun UK has perpetuated the buzz that Pete will play a gig at anyone’s birthday party for a mere $200. This has resulted in at least 500 serious offers aimed towards his publicity agents; even a few inquiries have been aimed towards our inbox, including this one:

Name: Claire (surname omitted)

Subject: Pete Doherty

Message: Hi, Wondered if the news was true that Pete is doing private gigs for us nobodies? If so, wondered if I could pay £200 for one Libertines song on our Karaoke at our wedding on 2nd August 2008. We love him so much and are having “This is for lovers” for our first dance. Please let me know, if it is all rubbish in the papers, like it usually is, then not to worry. Thought it was worth a try! We are in Nottingham.

Unfortunately, Claire, this rumour is indeed rubbish. Mister Doherty’s asking price is much too great for us lowly civilians to afford, but he could probably be persuaded to lower his price if he were approached with a few pints of beer in hand.

In authentic “Pete Doherty sellout” news, a wealthy American entrepreneur from Silicon Valley recently paid our antihero $30,000 for a private gig in Doherty’s smelly ass home. Indeed, Greg Thomas and his wife flew to Marlborough, Wiltshire and waited for seven hours past the appointed time just for the privilege:

While waiting for the gig to start on Friday night, the singer’s friend and “literary agent” Paul Roundhill said: “This guy loves Pete. It’s going to be really great. I just hope Pete is straight enough to perform.

“I think someone might have given him some drugs as he’s out of it at the moment. But I’m going to wake him up when they get here.”

After a frantic series of phone calls, 31-year-old Mr Thomas, looking understandably nervous and refusing to comment, eventually arrived with his wife Cynthia, 26.

They were ushered inside by the singer, who exclaimed: “Great to meet you.”

Obviously, it’s great to meet anyone who will hand you $30,000 for the one-hour jam session that you probably would have conducted without an audience. However long the wait, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were reportedly quite pleased at what they received for their money.

Later yesterday morning, Doherty, wearing a brown hat, emerged blinking in the sunlight to beat the dust from a rug.

He said: “The gig went really well. It was really nice. I got to try out lots of new material. These people were real aficionados. They certainly know their stuff. Everything I played went down really well, from old songs all the way through to my new stuff which no one’s heard.

“They were a really nice couple as well. They’ve got three children and it was just nice all round, all for a bit of pocket money.”

Yep, considering that Mr. Thomas owns a $2 million dollar home in American suburbia, this was just a drop in the former Sega executive’s budget. I do hope that the couple were able to wash the stench off in short order. For his part, Doherty cleaned up quite nicely, and, depending on who you believe, this windfall led him to rake in up to half of his last year’s income. Not too shabby, eh mates?