Shane MacGowan's wife Victoria Mary Clarke has revealed their connection "deepened" after he gave up heroin.
Shane MacGowan's wife Victoria Mary Clarke says their connection deepened after he gave up heroin
The Pogues frontman - who died last month aged 65 - married Victoria, 57, in 2018 after dating for more than 30 years and she's revealed their relationship was up and down as the rocker battled his addictions but in later years they became much closer as he calmed down following years of carnage which included setting fire to hotel rooms and painting himself blue.
Victoria told the Guardian newspaper: "I’d organise a dinner party, but it would end up being on the roof and somebody would fall off. Or my dad would turn up and try to get off with Sinead O’Connor ...
"[Shane] would do crazy things like take 100 tabs of acid in a day then jump out of the window of a moving taxi, or paint himself blue. And he would quite often set fire to things. He set fire to hotel rooms that we stayed in – while we were in them – because of the acid. We were living very much on the edge of some kind of actual destruction."
However, she explained Shane had calmed down a lot by the time they married in 2018. She added: "By that stage he had changed very much. He calmed down, and he began to do what I asked him to do.
"He gave up smoking, he gave up heroin. The only fight we ever had after the wedding was about him doing his physio! He really mellowed. And our connection deepened."
She said of their later years together: "We lived a very quiet life. We hardly ever went out, we spent most of our time at home watching TV.”
It comes after Victoria opened up about her grief over losing Shane in November, admitting she felt prepared for his death because she had spent so many years worrying about him.
During an appearance on Good Morning Britain, she said: “I spent many, many years – probably at least 35 years – worried about losing Shane as he pushed boundaries so much with what humans can do to their body.
“I dreaded that. I thought that I would fall apart. I thought I’d die, I thought I’d not be able to speak, comatosed or go on drugs myself – something like that ...
“I want you all to know [losing a loved one] is not as bad as you think it’s going to be and there’s a huge amount of love that comes your way when you lose someone that you didn’t really expect."
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