The challenge required him to eat an enormous fried breakfast and a burger and chips

Pete Doherty has become one of only a few people to conquer a long-running breakfast challenge at a café in Kent.

The Libertines are currently in the process of setting up a hotel and recording studio in Margate called the Albion Rooms.

Doherty took on the breakfast challenge at Cliftonville’s Dalby Cafe this morning (August 21), finishing the giant meal in under 20 minutes. The challenge requires participants to consume four rashers of bacon, four eggs, four sausages, hash browns, onion rings, bubble and squeak, two slices of thick bread, and a quarter-pounder burger and chips.

Anyone who, like Doherty, finishes the platter of food in under 20 minutes gets the meal for free. According to café owner Mark Ezekiel, only “five or six” people have managed the feat.

Speaking to KentLive, he said: “The challenge has been going since 2004 and 15 or 16 people have managed to complete it in total. Only five or six have managed to complete it in 20 minutes.”

Ezekiel said he and his staff were surprised Doherty had become one of the few to beat it. “He might be slim but he is very tall,” the café owner said. “He’s 6ft 3.

“We get so many people who think they are going to eat it, we thought it was just going to be another case of that,” he added. “He wolfed two-thirds of it down in six or seven minutes. Usually, we get people who eat quite a lot of it at first but then they hit the wall and they can’t go on anymore.”

The Libertines have been getting involved in the local community since beginning work on their Margate hotel. Recently they were revealed as this season’s sponsors for Margate F.C., while they will curate a day, dubbed Sharabang, at Broadstairs festival Wheels & Fins in September.

Their appearance at Wheels & Fins will be their last live performance for “the foreseeable future”. “Peter, Gary, John and myself think it’s about time we took a break from playing live until we have something new for everyone to hear,” Carl Barat explained.


“The ‘Albion Rooms’ studio is finished, it’s beautiful and we want to concentrate all our efforts writing and recording the new album. This will make this last show very special indeed as it should bring this Libertines chapter to a close with a SharaBANG.”