Pogues guitarist calls farewell tour a 'marketing ploy'

The Pogues have announced a "farewell tour" for the UK, much to the consternation of their guitarist. Phil Chevron has blasted notices for the goodbye tour, calling it "a marketing ploy" by others in the band. "This claim does not come from me," he wrote on the group's website, "and I will neither be supporting it nor discussing it."

The seven-date tour begins in Glasgow and ends on 21 December in Brixton, with reported Irish gigs earlier in the month. These concerts will close the band's 28th year, and their ninth since frontman Shane MacGowan re-formed the folk-punk rabble-rousers. But despite the flier's unequivocal "Farewell Christmas Tour" tag-line, the Pogues don't exactly seem ready to say farewell.

Not long after Chevron's grumpy post to the official message-board, bandmate Spider Stacy popped in with a clarification. "This is the last Christmas tour for the foreseeable future," he wrote. "That's not to say we won't be showing up at festivals here and there or maybe even the odd gig around the UK and Ireland and certainly in Europe. But we're tired of dragging our weary, freezing carcasses around these drowning islands every December, so we're going to give it a rest before you get tired of it, too. Go and see the Libertines. They're the best."

But Chevron clearly doesn't agree with his bandmate. "As you can see, opinion is not uniform on the matter," he wrote. "Spider is using the royal 'we' here." Stacy responded: "Using the royal 'we'? God forbid a band member would come on these pages and do something like that!"

Later, Stacy reappeared, trying to calm the Pogues' tremulous fans. "Don't get yer kecks in a twist," he wrote. "Take a deep breath and flick back a couple of pages and read slowly. Does it say we're splitting up? No it doesn't. And sorry to disappoint but there's absolutely no internal arguments going on, spirits are high in the Pogues camp." Indeed, spirits are so high they seem almost icy. Perhaps a break is not a bad idea.