Shane MacGowan cried his eyes out over the deaths of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Princess Diana.
Shane MacGowan cried his eyes out over the deaths of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Princess Diana
The staunch republican rocker, who was killed by pneumonia on Thursday (30.11.23) aged 65, was secretly a fan of the royals, his widow has revealed.
Journalist Victoria Mary Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme Shane loved to watch documentaries about the Royal Family, and cried when Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Diana died.
She added: “He always buying flowers and he was just a really romantic man.”
Meanwhile, a bartender at the Joiners' Arms in London, whom Shane McGowan once praised for his notable Guinness-pouring skills, said the ‘Fairytale of New York’ singer would tip him £100.
American Matt Kolsky told the Irish Mail on Sunday he worked as a bartender there in 2004 and served the Pogues frontman, but had no idea who he was.
He said: “A guy who just looked obviously pretty rough to me, as an American not knowing who this person was, a guy with like three jackets and two teeth came and sat at the bar.
“He quietly ordered a Guinness and when I poured it he made a really brief comment about an American who pours a Guinness properly.”
He went on to serve him around four pints of Guinness before the singer left, and recalled: “He was just quietly sitting there, I think he may have read a newspaper or something at some point but nobody really bothered him.
“He was just, to me, a guy who I was surprised could afford four Guinnesses and was sitting at the end of the bar drinking and just spending some time with himself.
“I was serving other people and eventually I noticed he had left and there was a bill under his empty glass – I went over and saw that it’s a £100 note… at that moment my boss walked in and walked over to me and was like, ‘Do you know who that was? That’s Shane MacGowan, he’s the lead singer of The Pogues’.”
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