Pete's band Babyshambles are on a 20-date UK tour, promoting third album, Sequel to the Prequel, which was released last month.

It has been six years since the group’s last album, and Pete admits he wasn’t sure during that period whether they would ever work together again.

The 34-year-old former Libertines frontman said: “It was a shambles! We had no communication, no direction. And that was enough for us to be lost at sea. Without communication, you can’t have anything.”

Guitarist Mick Whitnall added: “To be honest, there was a point not so long ago where I thought, ‘Well, that’s it – Babyshambles is well and truly over’.”

But in July 2011, bassist Drew McConnell was hit by a car as he was cycling, breaking three vertebrae in his spine, five ribs, a shoulder and a knee.

And a period of recuperation on Spain’s Coast of Silence wielded a set of new songs, which prompted the new album.

Drew said: “Pete had started coming round my house, and we’d sit around and drink tea and talk about how we missed being on the road and making records.

I told him I’d been writing a few new songs while I was away, and I played him some, and then he showed me a couple of his new songs and suddenly we had something exciting going on.”

The album was recorded in Paris, where Pete, who used to date supermodel Kate Moss, recently moved to get clean of his much-publicised drug addiction.

He said: “I’ve realised there’s a hunger there for me to be in this band. It’s intrinsically a part of me, I think. And it’s taken this album to really remind myself of that. And bloody hell, at least it got everyone over to Paris!”

Babyshambles play Folkestone's Leas Cliff Hall on Friday, October 18. Tickets are £27.50. Call 01303 228600.