I first met Shane MacGowan, whose funeral is today, in the late 1990s, way after the glory days with The Pogues. I’d see him around town at various functions and gigs, always with his partner, Victoria Mary Clarke, always sat on their own, no one bothering with them. Although emanating a dark charisma, he looked tired and sad to me. There appeared to be a cloud of depression and lonesomeness above him, even when surrounded by well-wishers and hangers-on.
So one night I went up and introduced myself, and we just got on. It was easy. I found him a gentle soul, quite shy actually, not like I’d imagined him at all. I’d admired him as far back as Gabrielle, by The Nips. That was his first band, but his songs with The Pogues were on another level. I was always in awe of his talent as a songwriter: his songs were highly literate stories of oppressed and downtrodden people marginalised by society; full of empathy and compassion for ordinary working men and women and their daily struggles – not forgetting the junkies and the drunks.
