Pete Doherty is donning his flat cap to perform the Mary Poppins tune Chim Chiminey at the South Bank Centre as part of a starry tribute to the Disney Songbook.

Doherty, the scruffy urchin with the million pound record contract and supermodel girlfriend, will join drinking pal Shane Macgowan and Meltdown festival curator Jarvis Cocker to pay tribute to classic Disney songs as part of the South Bank's annual music jamboree.

Nick Cave, Baaba Maal, Ralph Steadman and Bryan Ferry will also perform.

Saturday Night Live producer Hal Willner is behind the event. With one of the most sought after address books in the world, Wilner is a dab hand at organising the off-beat, celeb-stuffed project. In the past he has roped Tom Waits into paying tribute to Kurt Weill and Keith Richards into honouring Charles Mingus.

Last year Willner gathered a heavyweight line-up to cover sea shanties for an album inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean films. The group included Bono, Sting, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Depp and Lou Reed - enough to make Bob Geldof to do a double-take.

For the South Bank event, starring Doherty, reclusive legend Van Dyke Parks, famed for producing Brian Wilson and more recently Joanna Newson, will arrange the score.

The concert is being billed as a follow-up of sorts to Stay Awake, a celebration of Disney hits that Willner produced in 1987. The album featured artists such as Ringo Starr, Sun Ra, Tom Waits and Sinead O’Connor.

The concert will have one special fan - Jarvis Cocker’s son, Albert, 4. Cocker, who lives in Paris with wife stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington, recently revealed to The Times that Albert is a fan of early Disney animations,

"Thanks to my son, I now have a lot of time for early films such as Dumbo and Bambi - the only problem is that, because we never had DVDs or videos when I was Albert's age I had never seen a lot of these films. When it got to the bit in Dumbo where his mum gets taken away and put on a railway cart and there's a sign with 'Mad Elephant' on it, it destroyed me for 20 minutes."

Cocker is steering clear of Dumbo on the night, leaving the elephant-inspired tunes to singer Beth Orton. Instead he will perform one of Disney's best-loved sing-a-long numbers, I Wanna Be Like You from The Jungle Book.

Securing Doherty is no doubt a coup for the festival, although having the convicted drug-user at a family event may raise eyebrows.

Forest Of No Return - Hal Willner presents the Vintage Disney Songbook. Royal Festival Hall, 0871 663 2500, Sunday 17 June, 7.30pm.

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