North London, which they named "The Albion rooms." They formed a band with their neighbour Steve Bedlow, commonly referred to as "Scarborough Steve," and named themselves "The Strand", later discarded for "The Libertines" after the Marquis de Sade's Lusts of the Libertines ("The Albions" was also considered, but rejected; Albion is an archaic name for Britain). They later met John Hassall and Johnny Borrell, who played bass with the Libertines for a short period. Many of their early gigs took place in the flat shared by Doherty and Barât. They had booked themselves into the Odessa studios and played at Filthy Macnasty's Whiskey Cafe in Islington, where Pete was working as a barman. Roger Morton thought they had potential and offered, with a friend, to manage the Libertines. Despite a separate offer from an experienced member of the music industry, John Waller, the band accepted Morton's services as manager. However, Morton would eventually give up the job after an unsuccessful six months. In March 2000 the Libertines met Banny Pootschi, a lawyer for Warner Chappell Music Publishing. Recognizing their potential, she took on an active role in managing them. They recorded "Legs XI", a set of their best 8 tracks at the time (and later a popular bootleg recording among fans). However, by December 2000, they had still not been signed and this caused Dufour, Hassall and Pootschi to part ways with the Libertines. The subsequent success of The Strokes, a band with a similar style, caused Pootschi to reconsider her position. She formed a plan (dubbed "Plan A") to get the Libertines signed to Rough Trade Records within 6 months. In this period, Barât and Doherty wrote many of the songs which ended up on their first album. Gary Powell was recruited to play drums, as Paul Dufour was deemed by Pootschi to be 'too old'. On 1 October 2001, Barât and Doherty played a showcase for James Endeacott from Rough Trade. After Borrell failed to attend this important rehearsal, they telephoned him to discover he was on tour "living the high life." Endeacott's support led to them playing for the heads of Rough Trade, Geoff Travis and Jeanette Lee, on 11 December that year. They were told they would be signed, and the official deal took place on 21 December. The Libertines were in need of a bassist, so Hassall rejoined the band at their request, but was