In an exclusive extract from his new memoir, the Libertines frontman reflects on clandestine meetings, matching tattoos, and a very messy romance
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A lot of mine and Kate’s early meetings were quite clandestine. We’d meet in strange back rooms of restaurants in London. Despite being this multimillionaire, she was saying how she was really just a girl from a council estate in Croydon, so in the first week we were together, I insisted she get on a bus with me. She went everywhere in a limo usually. We got dressed up in disguise, put on wigs, and jumped on the bus around London. We used to have a bit of a laugh, really. We got matching tattoos that first week too. I think I insisted on that. I wanted her to prove her love, so I said, you’ve got to get a tattoo with my initials on, you’ve got to get branded – it was more of an insecurity thing on my part.
I met her parents early on and got on quite well with her mum. My mum and dad and little sister Emily came and met Kate at this new little flat I’d moved into in Islington. I’d filled it with a load of red plastic furniture and a couple of inflatable chairs. My dad said to Kate, “What do you do?” She was only small, and he didn’t associate her with the supermodel from the papers. She just laughed.
