My parents were... two very different peas in a pod, I'm not sure quite how they ever ended up with each other. I love them dearly.

Ex-Libertines singer Carl Barat takes you behind the scenes.

Ready Steady Go! may be the most fondly remembered 1960s pop TV show. It lasted barely three years, fading out, at the end of 1966, before it could outstay its welcome – like the sharp singles it helped to promote. Ray Davies and the producer Vicki Wickham's one-night-only revival for Meltdown can't resurrect the social club the studio became for the Beatles, Stones and Kinks, or the young dancing Mods who were almost trampled by careening cameras. The minimal set – a couple of period photo-decorated signs – is a letdown. But somehow, the spirit of pop at its most warmly creative catches light again.

Carl Barât's talent has often been superseded by his fame. His combustible relationship with the ever-newsworthy Pete Doherty is well-documented, and rumours continue to swirl about a possible Libertines reunion. Yet in the midst of the headlines, Barât has formed one half of the last decade's most memorable songwriting partnerships and fronted two of its more popular indie bands. Now, standing centre stage at Koko, the limelight shines solely on him, but what's unclear is how happy he is to embrace it alone.

Cheery property expert-cum-TV homemaker Kirsty Allsopp was at Thursday's Hodder dinner at Café de Paris to promote the new paperback edition of Kirstie's Homemade Home. Deciding, however, that the subject of craft would yield few gags, she chose to recount a racy anecdote from her youth.

Perhaps this less infamous ex-Libertine's autobiography is not the one we would really wish to be reading, but it turns out that Carl Barât 's story is inextricably tied up with Pete Doherty's rise and fall.

When The Libertines announced that they were reforming for the Reading and Leeds festivals, it is fair to say that the news was not greeted with universal excitement. For all those who idolised the quartet (who split up in 2004 in rather acrimonious circumstances), there were also many who saw the group as being over-hyped and over-rated.

Carl Barat said the chemistry with his fellow Libertines frontman Pete Doherty is "pretty electric" as the band prepared to play their first full gig tonight since their bitter break-up in 2004.

Indie rockers The Libertines announced plans today for their first full gig since confirming they were getting back together.