Shane MacGowan’s widow opens up about infidelity and singer’s fights

By Lydia Hawken For Mailonline

15:37 26 Jun 2024, updated 16:39 26 Jun 2024

Shane MacGowan’s widow has opened up about the ‘unglamorous’ side of being with The Pogues singer and how they survived infidelity in their relationship of almost 40 years.

Victoria Mary Clarke, 58, from Dublin, first met her late husband when she was 16 years old at the Royal Oak pub in North London in December 1982.

The couple – who had a eight year age difference – began dating in 1986 and married in 2018, celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary just days before Shane died last year. 

Appearing on the latest episode of the What a Woman podcast, Victoria spoke about their on-and-off relationship and how Shane would be regularly attacked on the streets of London at the height of his fame.

Opening up about their early relationship, Victoria – who is an artist and writer – explained: ‘My life changed completely when I met him and it was like this missing piece of my life has arrived.’

Victoria went on to explain how they had ‘pure, unconditional love’ for each other, which meant they were ‘unable to hold grudges’.

She said: ‘We both did things that other couples would totally break up over. Being unfaithful to each other, most people would think that’s a dealbreaker. 

‘But we just absolutely loved each other, completely and utterly.’ 

Although Victoria didn’t delve into the details of their infidelities, Shane told the Observer in 2000 that he fathered a son with another woman. 

When asked if he felt like a ‘bad Catholic’ for not having children, the singer said: ‘I don’t know. I only know about one. He’s a young man. He lives in Scotland. He knows where to get hold of me. 

‘I saw him once, when he was three. He knows I’m his father. Years ago, me and [the mother] Lesley agreed that any time he wanted to come and see me he could come and see me and I’d take him out for a drink, get him whatever he wants. But she married a good man, and he seems to be satisfied with him as his father.’

Elsewhere in the podcast, Victoria revealed how ‘anti-Irish’ feeling among people in the UK also made life difficult in the 1980s.

She said: ‘We got attacked physically regularly. I got used to expecting it to happen. We might just be walking down the street and a bunch of guys would jump out and start hitting him or trying to fight him. 

‘But he was a good fighter and he would always fight back with a lot of gusto. I never saw him defeated in a fight but it was something I came to expect.’ 

On top of this, Victoria also recalled how Shane ‘never looked respectable’, which made flagging down taxis challenging.

She said: ‘He dressed like someone who lived on the street essentially, he always had holes in his clothes and holes in his shoes. Cigarette ash and vomit all over him so he never looked respectable. 

‘Quite often taxi drivers would just drive past. So he’d have to hide and I’d have to flag down the taxi and then he’d jump out the driver would go, “no mate – you’re not coming in my cab”.

‘We’d get thrown out of restaurants and thrown off planes. People would take exception to him on a plane and say he’s obviously been drinking so we’d have to get off and wait for the next plane. There was a lot of prejudice and plenty of challenges. It wasn’t all glamorous.’ 

What’s more, Victoria also revealed how she spent the majority of their relationship worrying about Shane’s health – as the singer was plagued by ill-health linked to his years of alcohol and substance abuse in his later years.

The widow added: ‘It’s something I’d been afraid of for a very long time because as soon as we got together, I had people telling me that he didn’t have long to live [in the 1980s]. 

‘I spent most of the time worrying about him and worrying that something was going to happen to him.’ 

As well as being wheelchair-bound, the singer had also been battling viral encephalitis – a condition that causes inflammation in the brain – for eight years. 

Despite the singer’s years of ill health, Victoria said that Shane’s death of pneumonia still came as a shock to her. 

She continued: ‘He never actually had a life-threatening or terminal illness, ever. So I fully expected him to recover and so did he. 

‘So I think that was probably good for both of us because we didn’t act as though he was dying. We had a bit of fun in the hospital and he got on great with the staff but he was looking forward to going home.’ 

Announcing Shane’s death on social media, Victoria wrote at the time: ‘I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it.

‘Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.

‘I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures.’

Born in Kent to Irish parents on Christmas Day 1957, MacGowan in his autobiography described early childhood summers spent at an Irish farmhouse with his family, drinking, smoking and singing traditional songs.

‘It was like living in a pub,’ he told the Guardian in 2013.

After winning a scholarship to the prestigious Westminster School in London, MacGowan struggled to fit in and was expelled two years later for drug use and started hanging out in London bars with other musicians.

At 17, his alcohol and drug abuse helped trigger a mental breakdown and he was kept in a psychiatric hospital for six months.

After recovering, he embraced the eruption of punk in London in the late 1970s and early 80s.

He brought Irish traditional music to a huge new audience in the late 1980s by splicing it with punk, and achieved mainstream success with his bittersweet, expletive-strewn 1987 Christmas anthem with the Pogues.

Writing in The Guardian in 2009, Victoria said: ‘Once we were together, I felt my own life becoming subsumed by his. This was a welcome feeling for me, as I preferred to live someone else’s life.

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‘I took immediate responsibility for his moods and problems and devoted myself to solving them and to being his personal assistant as well as his lover. I worshipped him in every possible way.

‘In return, I felt that he gave me a sense of purpose, as well as a sense of being wanted. I belonged to him in a way that I had never really belonged to my family.’

It was a long courtship for the couple who didn’t get engaged until 2007 and were not married for another 11 years.

They tied the knot in November 2018 at Copenhagen City Hall with Johnny Depp, Shane’s longtime friend, playing the guitar during the low-key ceremony.

Shane’s wife announced in 2016 that he was sober for the ‘first time in several years’ and explained how his drinking problem stemmed from years of ‘singing in bars and clubs where people go to drink and have fun’.

She claimed his spiral into alcohol addiction happened due to the introduction of hard drugs, such as heroin.

The journalist said the singer became sober after a lengthy stay in hospital when he was suffering from pneumonia and a hip injury, and Shane continued his sobriety journey when he returned home.

In an interview with the Irish Mirror, Victoria said she and Shane never had children together because they were too irresponsible. 

She added that she was always worried the musician would burn the house down because he was always dropping his cigarettes.

Shane has suffered physically from years of binge drinking and would often perform on stage drunk.

He began drinking at the tender age of five, when his family gave him Guinness to help him sleep, and his father frequently took him to the local pub while he drank with his friends.