Married To The Mob!
What's It Like Being Mrs Shane MacGowan?

Select Magazine August 1993.

VICTORIA:
WHEN COURTNEY RANG UP TO THREATEN me," says Victoria Clarke, co-author of that ill-starred Nirvana book, "she said, People could say exactly the same things about you and Shane as they're saying about me and Kurt - nobody knows what your relationship is, like nobody knows what mine is.
"And I thought, Yeah, nobody does know... People say he's wonderful, he's a genius, how can you compete? But I ended up always on tour with him, like a psychiatrist and nanny and manager and a girlfriend too."
Shane MacGowan's girlfriend of eight years is uncommonly beautiful, slim, wavy-haired with an oddly prosaic manner. She was born on January I I 1966 in Dublin, and grew up on various communes in Southern Ireland. She left school at 16 to open Cork's first second-hand clothes and record shop, using the procceds to travel off and on to London. She moved there with her boyfriend Rob (the drummer in Stump) in 1984 when she was 18. The only soul they knew in London was Spider from The Pogues. Through him Victoria knew Shane - though she thought he was arrogant and didn't like the idea of these Londoners playing Irish music.
Then, on her 19th birthday, when Rob was away, she and Shane argued about traditional Irish singing - Shane thought he did it, Victoria insisted he didn't. In the end they hit it off, they kissed...
"...And that was it," says Victoria now. "We kind of fell in love that night." Poor Rob had never seen the famously dentally-challenged MacGowan as much competition and was understandably upset.
"But I didn't think Shane was ugly at all. i thought his eyes were very beautiful and that he was sensitive. A bit bashed up, but really cute."
What was not cute was The Pogues'subsequent four-year tour, during which tales of Shane's early weakness for a groupie or two got back to Victoria.
"I did catch him with other women... The first time I behaved with great dignity, I think. It was on the tour bus, in France. I found Shane sitting with this girl, and, um, they proceeded to get off with one another that night in front of me. They went back to the hotel and slept together right next to my room ... and he knew she was going to be there."
From late 1986 onwards, Victoria became a full-time ancillary Pogue. Shane was becoming unable to cope without drinking".
"Somebody would phone me up and go, Can you come and rescue him? And I would." Once, she was even phoned from Australia.
"As The Pogues became succsessful, his picture was everywhere and he hated his own image. He was expected to be Brendan Behan all the time - and that's not him at all. He's quiet, not the garrulous drunken person everyone seems to think. But people would look at me when he was out of his head and couldn't get onstage. Like, Can't you do something? As if I'm supposed to be responsible for this guy who's ten years older than me...
"Things came to crisis in Dublin, just before The Pogues made'Peace And Love'in 1988/9. Victoria found Shane in bed, admittedly practically comatose, but with another woman. She left him and went back to London, and Shane went off the rails ("I think he painted himself black and threw himself out of a moving car"), crazy on poteen (meths-like Irish hooch) and magic mushrooms, and ended up in St John Of God Hospital.
"When I saw him in the hospital bed, he was completely clean and straight and sober, and I dunno..." They got back together. Shane was transferred to a hospital in London, but he escaped in 24 hours and went straight back into the studio. "He just freaked out on acid for a while - maybe 20 tabs a day. He was always tripping, all the time. It was very scary. It was hell on earth."
Didn't you ever want to leave? "All the time. But it always came down to the fact that if I left he was going to die... Even though I know now that I should have abandoned him, let him sort it out for himself."
Victoria tried everything, but it was leaving The Pogues that was Shane's turning point. The rest of the band started to mistrust his vision. With him being so mad all the time, he could no longer write. "He'd been trying to get sacked for years. He drank too much Sake and fell out of a train or something. And I wasn't there to catch him." Victoria is 27 now, the same age as Shane was when they got together. Recently, she told Shane that she takes no more interest in whether or not he kills himself. But she says she would like to say some nice things too. So:
"He's totally unpretentious. He's very humble, totally non-judgemental. I've seen him give $100 bills to people in the street, regularly. And he would always see himself as being on the same level as people on the street, as the down and outs in Kings Cross."
Is your relationship a successful one?
"In some senses no, because our communication levels aren't that high. It's not a lovey-dovey thing, though we're romantic people: he doesn't buy me flowers but he does write songs about me. That's sweet. But if you're looking for someone who's going to be there for life, be totally loyal and always there for you, then Shane's your man."

SHANE:
"Victoria was part of a circle of friends that I knocked about with, drank with, so I was meeting her all the time and chatting with her and then we had a date ... I took her to a club and, er, nearly got my head kicked in by the bouncer. He was huge I was just lucky that I knew the geezer who owned the club and the bouncer knew that if he knocked my head off he'd lose his job... I haven't ever been very good at introducing her to people, you know. But she's good at pushing herself forward, she's very resourceful... I used to go off on tour and leave her behind for ages. That was horrible. I missed her. In the end I started fucking paying for her to come on tour with me, cos I couldn't handle the separations any more. I done it too much. The way we did it was ridiculous, it was just non-stop, it was completely inhuman. I hated it for the last four years, but she helped me ... I had to go into hospital several times, but she comes to see me. She doesn't leave me there to rot.
"Towards the end of The Pogues for me was the worst time. I was in the worst state that I've ever been in, therefore she was getting the worst time that she'd ever had off me... We don't have like, rows with me hitting her or her hitting me - although she has hit me a few times, but I haven't even noticed, I've been so out of it. People think I'm like that all the time, but I'm not. The best times are the times when I'm not like that... But you can't say if it's a successful relationship till one of you's dead, can you? Then you know."