Count me as one of the people who truly, desperately wanted to believe that the perpetually drinking, drugging and law-troubled Babyshambles rock star Pete Doherty was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated by outside parties. Because then he might actually go away and crawl back under the rock he came from.

Alas, that won't be happening anytime soon, especially now that Orion has signed Doherty up for his diaries, dating back from 1999. According to the Independent, the 20 volumes of poems, drawings, film reviews and lyrics will be condensed into one hard-back volume, and published in March 2007. And according to the Bookseller, the man responsible for making Doherty's scribblings public is Ian Preece, who bought world rights for the tome.

Said Preece: "From the early books a fascinating and very entertaining picture emerges of the young poet, broke in London, serving popcorn at the Prince Charles Cinema, dreaming of creating a band infused with the 'spirit of Albion'." And n a statement yesterday (because he failed to turn up at his own press conference), Doherty said that publishing his thoughts was "exciting to me personally" as he had "always wanted to have a book published". How nice. If only it would show that yes, indeed, the KLF is responsible for this mess of a man...