CLEAN BREAK
By: Victoria Mary Clarke
Source and Copyright: Sunday Independent Life Magazine. 27.06.2004
Thanks to Holger for sending me this article.

Holidaying In Gozo with Shane MacGowan, her brilliant, beloved, beleaguered ex-boyfriend, Victoria Mary Clarke hears why he has given up heroin at last.

"I'd like to fuck Brad Pitt," Shane says 'Would you? That's weird. I'd like to be Brad Pitt," I confess. It is the kind of conversation that I can only imagine having with Shane. Who else would be that honest? 

We are lying on the red sand at Ramla Bay, on the island of Gozo, which is the spot where Ulysses was shipwrecked on his way home from Troy. Ulysses was seduced by the nymphette Calypso, who enticed him with the promise of eternal life. We, on the other hand, have been seduced by the beauty of Brad Pitt with his magnificent muscles. Both of us. 

Shane had just been badly beaten up in a bar in London and he asked me to come on holidays with him so that he could recuperate. I knew that there was an ayurvedic spa here on Gozo so I suggested we try it, and he agreed. If I had suggested Czechoslovakia he would have had reservations. No pun intended. 

There is a prayer that they give you o say at Alchoholics Anonymous meetings: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know he difference." Shane and I are standing at the check-in desk for Air Malta at six in the morning waiting for the rep to show up with our tickets. I hate airports, I hate waiting, I hate flying and I hate being anywhere at six in the morning. But most of all, I hate being stared at. Shane is wearing a filthy suit covered in ash and a pair of gold-rimmed Elvis-in-Vegas shades and he's fumbling in the brown paper bag that is serving as his suitcase. People are staring. I'm paranoid at the best of times, but just because you're paranoid.

I know it's ridiculous to care if people stare, I know they might just be thinking what a lovely songwriter he is, but I can't help worrying that they me thinking what a mess he looks and, as always, I'm worrying that it's me they are accusing, me that's responsible. The staring, whether well-intentioned or not, is one of the things only God can change, but I am not serene about it.

When the rep arrives I bite his head off He says, "Dont worry," in a breezy manner I say, "I'm not apologising, I'm complaining in a most unbreezy manner. Shane helpfully offers to have him sacked by his friends in high places. 

In the duty-free, I make Shane buy a carry-on trolley thing instead of the paper bag, and I refuse to let him go to the bar. And I wonder whatt the hell I'm doing here. After all we lived together for 15 years. I should have the sense by now to know what I'm letting myself in for. But something makes me want to do this. Something very big.

Shane and I ended our relationship as romantic partners three years ago. But relationships don't end, surely, if they ever meant something. Lately, i've been reading a lot about celebrity couples getting divorced and wives demanding millions in alimony. Sadie Frost was photographed looking triumphant alongside an article about how she will claim the house, severeal million and a monthly income that Fergie couldn't have sniffed at. Divorce can be a profitable business. But is it ever worth it if it means the end of friendship?

A SANER SHANE 

I suspect that, as breaking up is always hard to do, those couples who insist that the split was amicable are lying. But what makes it hardest is the loss of a best friend, a companion, a life partner. Someone you can be yourself with and and still be loved - someone you can say anything to. Even that you want to be Brad Pitt.

It's been nearly three years for me, but I still miss Shane and he still misses me. We have atayed friends, of course. And we go out occasionally. But the cosy domesticity of staying in, eating pizza and watching telly is what most people miss after a long relationship, not the going out, You can go out with anyone, but you need to be very comfortable with someone to slob out together at home. When you leave your lover you have to think about the bad things. You have to think about your differences, what drove you apart. You can't afford to reminisce, romantically.

Traditionally, couples avoid each other after they break up, even if only one person wanted the thing to end. There is a belief that you have to get rid of one relationship in order to make room for the next one. As if there is only room for one love at a time. But shutting out the bad means shutting out a whole relationship, the good as well as the bad. Throwing out the proverbial baby. And having come to realise this, I was determined to spend some time with Shane in order that we might salvage not just occasional companionship, but also the love that I know we once had. However difficult that might be, and however much I might wish to draw a line under the bad times. 

My editor suggested that I take this opportunity to interview Shane. I wondered if it was a good idea. After all, we broke up straight after my book A Drink With Shane was published. And if it's a strange thing to interview your ]over, it's an even stranger thing to interview your ex-lovr. But I knew that other people have trouble accepting the things they cannot change. And other people miss the person they were once in love with. And apart from all that I knew that an interview with Shane would be entertaining. So I agreed. 

There follows a grim flight and a misunderstanding at the airport in Malta, when Shane goes through passport control without me and i wait for half an hour outside the gents' loo. And our taxi driver refuses to stop so that I can get a drink of water, insisting that it's only a 45 minute taxi reide. I'm parched and fuming when we eventually arrive at the Kempinski, which according to the reviews is a very nice hotel. We have actally been advised by our travel agent to rent a farmhouse with a pool fror the sake of privacy. But I need one night of luxury, and an ayurvedic massage to chill me out after the journey.

At the hotel, a nice Indian girl drips warm oil all over my head until I calm down, and Shane heads for the bar, not bothered about seeinh his room first. I know it's a good hotel because the next morning, when he's still asleep in the bar, they're utterly charming about it. So we decide fuck the farmhouse, well just stay here.

In the course of the next few days, we compromise, I persuade Shane to have a bath and buy new clothes. He asks me ehat improvements I'm going to make to myslef. I don't know. The Dalai Lama would be gracious and accept him the way he is, but I'm not the Dalai Lama. Shane has always been deeply spiritual and, as we speak, he is adorned with enough crucifixes, miraculous medals and other talismans to ward off even the most pernicious of evil spirits. If he hadn't been a singer, he might well have become a Catholic priest And he would have been extremely good at it. 

This year, it turns out, he has bem asked to write a song for when the Dalai Lama comes to Scotland to see the Glasgow Celtic, And having had a few days to read all the guide books and sit around doing nothing, he is in the mood to be interviewed, so we bring the tape recorder and he talks about it.

"I don't know if I will sing for him," he says."But there will be Tibetan orchestra coming over, and proper people who can go OHHHHMMME. It's quite wild for me."

"Why is the Dalai Lama going to Scotland?" I ask, bemused. "What does the Celtic football team have to do with the Dalai LAma"

"We are Catholic and we are warriors and we have an oppressive force driving us out of our own country," Shane responda, heading off on a bit of a tangent, as he sometime does. "That's what he's got in common with the Irish, the fact that he comes from a wonderful, beautiful Garden of Eden, which his place was until imperialism struck"

"Yes." I say, "but what has he got to do with football?"

"He's got nothing to do with football, but that's what people do, they go to football matches. The matches between Rangers and Celtic are where the politics are acted out and the Dalai Lama can explain to these eejits that there is one good governing all men. And he is a manifestation of that god, because he is a reincarnation of Buddha. Buddha said we will all be reincarnated, but he didn't make any rules about it"

Shane is looking forward to mmeting the great man naturally.

"Of course I'm enthralled," he says "I really miss having a spiritual life, but I don't really get it together on my own."

And when he's inished writing the Dalai Lama song, he's been asked to do a "rock school" on televison. Teaching children to play music is, he says, a dream come true and he reminds me that he taught a teenage drug addict to play guitar when he was in he loony bin at the age o 18. Apart from that, he says, he has romantic ideas about trying to start a herd of wild horses on his farm in Tipperary.

"And I would like to get a camper van and travel. Anywhere"

"But you've been around the world several times," I point out.

"Yes, but I was touring most of the time. And I haven't seen all of Ireland. But I don't feel at home in ireland anymore - I don't feel at home anywhere. I think I was born to travel. Some people are born to travel. And wherever you are is a little bit of Ireland, like Rupert Brooke said about Engalnd, just before he was killed. He said 'If I am to lie a rotting corpse in a Flanders field, it will mean that there is always a spot that is always England.'"

At this point Shane starts to cry. I suggest we postpone the interview, being less comfortable with people crying than he is. But he insists that he's just etting warmed up. "Rupert Brooke would have turned out to be as brilliant as Kavanagh had he lived," he says. "He had that ultra-romantic view of the land."

Shane has always been a romantic, and we get on to Kavanagh for quite some time. He sows me pictures of the dark-haired girl who inspired Raglan Road, from a biography of the poet. Along with this book, he has a stack of others, practically a suitcase including biographies of Gerry Adams, Che Guevara and Robert Emmet. He's also obsessed with Hemingway at the moment. 

"Hemingway blew his brains out on his 60th birthday, after getting his last blowjob," he informs me. 

Why?

"Because he didn't want to get any older. If you feel you've come to that point, it could be a good idea, but I have no intention Of coming to that point at 60. But then again, I haven't fought as many lions or fucked as many Arabs as Hemingway did, and i wasn't a medic in the First World War. I think he thought there weren't anymore kicks to be had, he had done it all. Son on his 60th birthday, drunk, he blew his brain out with his family downstairs."

"Did they not mind?" I ask, concerned.

"Of course they minded! But if he had left it 20 years later he would have been hooked up to horrific devices in a hospital, and it would have been worse."

For Shane, there is no danger of taking the Hemingway route at this stage.

"Jesus, I've only just got going," he says indignantly, when I ask him about the possibili. "I've got the whole world to cover."

"Which bits?"

"Well, strangely enough, all the bits joey likes, I hates," he says. Joey is his manager 
Joey Cashman. "But then, he's a Cancer and I'm a Capricorn, so we get on, but we have 
massive differences Of opinion about eveerything. Joey is a pessimist, I'm an otimist. Joey 
is cynical, I'm not. Joey is lonely and I am too. Joey is a funny guy and so am I. So it's 
bad and good Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.." 

He and Joey are seldom seen apart. Joey shared a flat with us in London for a while. "Will 
you stay together until you are old men?" I ask.

"No I've got to get him a a woman. Women love him, but he can't handle monogamy. He won't 
commit. I had a lot of trouble with it myself but now I see the beauty and the sense in 
it."

"Alot of men won't commit," I say. 

"Yes, but Joey isn't any man, he's a great man. He's an imaginative man. A man who 
understands things that most men don't understand."

"Speaking of Joey," I say, "there has been a bit of trouble lately, with a petition.. " A 
group of peoples including Shane's parents have signed a petition on the internet to get 
rid of Joey.

"We didn't have any trouble with it," he scoffs. "It went up on the Friends Of Shane 
website. A few of the people who signed it were people I knew, people that I really like. 
But it was a gross slander. It's just family feuding on the internet. That's basically what 
it is. Thank God they've got the internet to act it out on, or we would all be lying around 
riddled with bullets! Heeeme hheeme hhhheeee. 

And despite the fact that the allegations are that serious amounts of money are unaccounted 
for, that's as seriously Shane is prepared to take the Situation. 

"Let's move on to your recent incident with the scaffolding," I say. He was attacked in a 
bar in Belgravia and beaten about the face with a piece of scaffolding.

"When the scumbag from the middle ages - sorry, I meant the midlands - attacked me?" he 
asks. "Me and a couple of friends were having a drink and we got talking to this Irish guy. 
And he bought me a drink. Later on, I saw him talking to this other bigger guy. Who 
followed me into the toilet and hit me with what felt like a knuckle duster. I couldn't 
believe the pain! I've never experienced pain or suffering like that before in my life."

"Even though you've been beaten up before, manytimes?" I ask.

"yes it was horrible, I just took the punches and then I slid down the wall. He kicked me 
with his foot a few times, but that was like someone applying bandages compared to the 
metal."

"Did he say anything?"

"He said 'are you queer?'"

"That's all?"

"Yes he looked like Sean Bean actually."
On our first date, Shane picked a fight with the bouncer at the 100 club, so we never 
actually got inside the club. However, he isn't usually an aggressive person.

"I would say I was stubborn and single-minded rather than aggressive," he says. "But i 
don't take shit."

He asks me to light a cigarette for him because the wind is strong where we are sitting, 
but the taste is revolting. It reminds me that when we ere together, I used to Smoke and 
drink and take drugs. Now I am fairly clean and serene. Shane has recently given up heroin, 
this time for good, he says. And he appears to mean it. 

"There are two ways that our souls are being attacked at the moment," he says. "Television 
is one of them. Heroin is another. They sell it to school kids. Which is really heavy. 
Heroin - I got into when I had enough money. I don't blame them for wanting to try it. But 
I blame the people who should be stopping kids from being introduced to it. I would say 
that nobody can handle heroin." 

WWas it very hard to kick?" 

"Yes, it was incredibly hard. I was terrified all the time, of cold turkey. It is 
unbelievably horrific. The physical bits are so horrific that they blank out the screaming 
depression, though. Its the loneliest feeling in the world. 

We are interrupted by the waitress bringing another gin and tonic. He still orders a lot of 
drinks but I notice that he doesn't drink most of them - he just collects them on the 
table around him, as if for security. Shane tips the staff astronomical amounts. I can't 
help worrying about him ordering all the diinks. And of course I criticise his profligacy. 
He assures me that he can always make more money. I feel too old for late nights and 
hangovers, I just want to be healthy and go to bed early. Possibly, if I was with someone 
less hedonistic, - I wouldn't be so neurotic, I tell myself.

Later, we both have the Ayurvedic Massage where they drip the warm oil on your head. Shane 
says that it's like opium - that you could definitly get people off drugs by giving them 
massages. I say thavs whatt Deepak Chopra does. He knows, he says. He's bought a copy of 
Deepal's new book as a present for me. 

When we get it together to go sightseeing,we find ourselves at mass in a local church and 
Shane takes Communion. We also visit at his insistence, the church where our Lady is 
supposed to have appeared. And we sit in the cathedral, just looking at the paintings which 
are every bit as inspired as those in the Sistine ChapeL Shane's a pagan as well as a 
Catholic, he says.

"That's what being an Irish Catholic is. We sing and we ight and we fuck and all of those 
things are banned. Our whole civilization is based on religion."

I ask him if he's having a good time. He is. "There's a feeling of absolute serenity," he 
says. I am like Cesare Borgia - my ego is so massive that I can almost imagine God. In 
fact I see God everywhere. Did you know about Michelotto, his half-Irish servant?" 

"No," I say. 

"Michelotto was left in charge of things while Cesare was away, and the Pope had him 
garotted and strung up. Cesare found him just as be was about to die, and asked him who had 
done it to him. 'Twas the holy faaaather, sorrrr,'" he says in an Irish accent.
"HEEEE HEEE HEEE"

"What's the similarity between you and Cesare Borgia?" I ask.

He thinks about it. "Cesare Borgia was a great Italian and i'm a great irishman," he 
concludes.

"Indeed," I say. And I wonder if he could be right.