The Libertines just want to write "beautiful songs" and don't care if they are "fat" and "not cool".

Pete Doherty and Carl Barat's band returned last week with the new single 'Run Run Run' and confirmed their new record 'All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade' is out next year, and the pair have insisted they don't care about being "relevant" and looking good as they are all about penning "wicked tunes".

In a joint interview with NME, Pete, 44, who has put on weight after swapping drugs and alcohol with food, said: “It would have nothing to do with whether we were relevant or getting fat, it would just be whether or not we had any decent songs. That’s the only way I can look at it. I just still get off on writing wicked tunes. Carl recently said to me, ‘I don’t care about being cool anymore – I just want to write beautiful songs’. I was like, ‘That’s what we’ve always done’. Apparently not!”

Carl, 45, quipped: “You just reminded me that I wasn’t cool.”

Asked if fans will have to wait another eight years for another record, Carl said: “Maybe it will, you never know. We’re trying not to put that pressure on ourselves at this stage. I’d like to get in a flow state where songs just come out, but I find it quite hard work.”

Elsewhere, the pair revealed they've been trying to get a biopic sorted for a while now, and if it ever does happen, they will play themselves.

Carl said: “We’ve talked about it, but then we always have a row about who’s playing who!”

Pete said: “We even tried to sit down and write some screenplays for it, but it always turns into some farcical comedy. There was a musical made in Korea called 'The Likely Lads'. They said it was going to run and run, but it closed after two nights.”

Asked who will play who, Pete said: “Now with all this AI, you can just play yourself. We’d be playing with ourselves, as usual.”