by Zuzana Sat Jan 01, 2005 2:18 pm
Shane and Victoria
split in 2001. In the past months, rumours about Shane’s new girlfriend have been spreading, but nothing concrete. (See
this articleat shanemacgowan.com for example.)
In the article below, Victoria talks about their relationship and about the reasons for the split-up:
I'll never get back with my soulmate Shane
Sunday Independent, 5.12.2004
LAST weekend, on ITV's Frank Skinner Show, Shane Mac Gowan - who is my ex-partner - was being interviewed about his life. He was asked if he has any ambitions left and he responded that he would like to patch up his relationship with me, which in his words had "Gone askew".
It was a deeply moving moment. Shane is a man who is much loved and Frank seemed genuinely touched at his romantic plight. He was sympathetic, but he asked if it might have been difficult for his partner, living with a heavy drinker. Shane seemed genuinely bemused by the question and pointed out that when we met I used to drink large whiskies, in large quantities. Thereby insinuating that I should have been hypocritical to complain about him doing the same thing.
Shane had a point. At the time that we first met, I was a teenager, probably about 16. And like our modern Irish teens, who can put away four units in one drink, at that time I was capable of drinking ridiculous quantities of booze. I thought it was fun. I did prefer large Jamesons, but I was just as happy to have large tequilas, large vodkas or large rum and blacks. I could start drinking at lunch or even at breakfast, and carry on all night and I could repeat the performance every day, if the opportunity arose. Which it often did.
At the time we met, I was living rent free in a flat in Finchley, just down the road from the pub where we first met. And somehow, I didn't have a shortage of money, even though I didn't work. My days followed a routine of getting up, getting stoned and going to the pub, getting pissed and going round to somebody's flat to carry on the party. Occasionally there was a Chinese takeaway or a curry, but food didn't play a large part.
Around the same time, I first encountered heroin, speed and cocaine and being a sociable girl, I accepted anything that was offered to me. Life was a party, and meeting Shane was a big part of the party.
Shane was older than me, nearly 10 years older and if anything, he was more sensible than I was. By the time I was 20, he had a successful career as a singer and he was touring the world for 300 days out of every year. Quite often, he would leave parties and say that he had to go home and write songs. Because I had no such responsibilities, I thought he was boring. Not for a moment did it occur to me that he might have a problem with alcohol or drugs. As long as there was a plentiful supply, which there always was, how could there be a problem?
For the next 10 years, life was never boring. We travelled all over the world and met all our favourite rock stars, all our favourite movie stars, all kinds of amazing people. And we drank and took drugs with them, all night long. Shane's picture was on the cover of magazines and newspapers, he was on Top of the Pops, we were rolling in money. We lived life exactly the way we felt like living it and we didn't have to do boring jobs. If we weren't hanging out with Keith Richards or Johnny Depp, we sat up all night doing coke and watching crap on television, playing our guitars, writing, generally amusingourselves.
We were the luckiest people in the world; we were soulmates, we adored each other and we were blissfully in love. For hours and hours, we could sit and gaze into each other's eyes and we didn't need anybody else to complete our happiness. We were each other's world.
There was something else, however. In Shane's words, we watched our friends grow up together and we saw them as they fell: some of them fell into heaven, some of them fell into hell. Even though we were doing exactly what we felt like doing, something was not quite right. People were falling by the wayside. First, Paul Verner, the Pogues lighting man, then Dave Jordan, the sound engineer, and then Charlie MacLennane, the road manager died. All of them had been close friends, Charlie had shared our home for many years. Two more friends died in our flat, one from a heroin overdose, another in a drug-related incident.
There are consequences to every action and from the outside, the consequences of our chosen lifestyle were more than obvious.
A documentary was made for television which shows us sitting at home, completely surrounded by empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays and the remains of lines of coke. But at the time, we thought it was funny. Kind of like the Osbournes on a much lower budget.
The only problem was, it wasn't really funny, anymore. Shane had been in intensive care and had been very sick; I was seeing a counsellor because I no longer saw the point in living and I was begging to be locked up. Nature was taking its inevitable revenge and our life together was unravelling into a very, very sticky mess indeed. With bailiffs hammering on the door and dead friends on the living-room floor.
In the end, I chose another kind of life. I had had a wild and wonderful adventure and I had met my soulmate and spent 15 years with him, but I don't think I would be alive today if I had carried on living that way.
It was a tremendously difficult thing, to leave, and I had to be helped to do it. Alcohol, drugs and the rock and roll lifestyle are extremely good fun; it would be hypocritical of me to deny that, as Shane has pointed out, because I did my fair share of them. The trouble is that what goes up must come down and sometimes you go down a lot further than you thought you would. And you aren't sure if you'll be able to get back up again.
Ironically, I wasn't able to watch Shane's interview on the Frank Skinner Show because I was detoxing at a health farm, and we weren't allowed to watch television. But afterwards, when I saw the video, I felt very sad. Shane is very dear to me and I don't know if I will ever again meet a man that I feel so connected to.
I don't know what would have happened if he had chosen to change his lifestyle, too. Possibly we would be together now. There is no doubt in my mind that abusing alcohol and drugs destroys even the closest of connections.
But whatever might have been, I know that I made the right decision and I'm sticking to it. Sometimes the price of staying together is too high to pay.
Victoria Mary Clarke
Sunday Independent © Copyright Unison.ie
Shane and Victoria [url=http://www.showbizireland.com/news/september01/06-macgowan03.shtml]split in 2001.[/url] In the past months, rumours about Shane’s new girlfriend have been spreading, but nothing concrete. (See[url=http://www.shanemacgowan.com/articles/shane%20mirror%203.jpg]this article[/url]at shanemacgowan.com for example.)
In the article below, Victoria talks about their relationship and about the reasons for the split-up:
[b]I'll never get back with my soulmate Shane [/b]
[i]Sunday Independent, 5.12.2004[/i]
LAST weekend, on ITV's Frank Skinner Show, Shane Mac Gowan - who is my ex-partner - was being interviewed about his life. He was asked if he has any ambitions left and he responded that he would like to patch up his relationship with me, which in his words had "Gone askew".
It was a deeply moving moment. Shane is a man who is much loved and Frank seemed genuinely touched at his romantic plight. He was sympathetic, but he asked if it might have been difficult for his partner, living with a heavy drinker. Shane seemed genuinely bemused by the question and pointed out that when we met I used to drink large whiskies, in large quantities. Thereby insinuating that I should have been hypocritical to complain about him doing the same thing.
Shane had a point. At the time that we first met, I was a teenager, probably about 16. And like our modern Irish teens, who can put away four units in one drink, at that time I was capable of drinking ridiculous quantities of booze. I thought it was fun. I did prefer large Jamesons, but I was just as happy to have large tequilas, large vodkas or large rum and blacks. I could start drinking at lunch or even at breakfast, and carry on all night and I could repeat the performance every day, if the opportunity arose. Which it often did.
At the time we met, I was living rent free in a flat in Finchley, just down the road from the pub where we first met. And somehow, I didn't have a shortage of money, even though I didn't work. My days followed a routine of getting up, getting stoned and going to the pub, getting pissed and going round to somebody's flat to carry on the party. Occasionally there was a Chinese takeaway or a curry, but food didn't play a large part.
Around the same time, I first encountered heroin, speed and cocaine and being a sociable girl, I accepted anything that was offered to me. Life was a party, and meeting Shane was a big part of the party.
Shane was older than me, nearly 10 years older and if anything, he was more sensible than I was. By the time I was 20, he had a successful career as a singer and he was touring the world for 300 days out of every year. Quite often, he would leave parties and say that he had to go home and write songs. Because I had no such responsibilities, I thought he was boring. Not for a moment did it occur to me that he might have a problem with alcohol or drugs. As long as there was a plentiful supply, which there always was, how could there be a problem?
For the next 10 years, life was never boring. We travelled all over the world and met all our favourite rock stars, all our favourite movie stars, all kinds of amazing people. And we drank and took drugs with them, all night long. Shane's picture was on the cover of magazines and newspapers, he was on Top of the Pops, we were rolling in money. We lived life exactly the way we felt like living it and we didn't have to do boring jobs. If we weren't hanging out with Keith Richards or Johnny Depp, we sat up all night doing coke and watching crap on television, playing our guitars, writing, generally amusingourselves.
We were the luckiest people in the world; we were soulmates, we adored each other and we were blissfully in love. For hours and hours, we could sit and gaze into each other's eyes and we didn't need anybody else to complete our happiness. We were each other's world.
There was something else, however. In Shane's words, we watched our friends grow up together and we saw them as they fell: some of them fell into heaven, some of them fell into hell. Even though we were doing exactly what we felt like doing, something was not quite right. People were falling by the wayside. First, Paul Verner, the Pogues lighting man, then Dave Jordan, the sound engineer, and then Charlie MacLennane, the road manager died. All of them had been close friends, Charlie had shared our home for many years. Two more friends died in our flat, one from a heroin overdose, another in a drug-related incident.
There are consequences to every action and from the outside, the consequences of our chosen lifestyle were more than obvious.
A documentary was made for television which shows us sitting at home, completely surrounded by empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays and the remains of lines of coke. But at the time, we thought it was funny. Kind of like the Osbournes on a much lower budget.
The only problem was, it wasn't really funny, anymore. Shane had been in intensive care and had been very sick; I was seeing a counsellor because I no longer saw the point in living and I was begging to be locked up. Nature was taking its inevitable revenge and our life together was unravelling into a very, very sticky mess indeed. With bailiffs hammering on the door and dead friends on the living-room floor.
In the end, I chose another kind of life. I had had a wild and wonderful adventure and I had met my soulmate and spent 15 years with him, but I don't think I would be alive today if I had carried on living that way.
It was a tremendously difficult thing, to leave, and I had to be helped to do it. Alcohol, drugs and the rock and roll lifestyle are extremely good fun; it would be hypocritical of me to deny that, as Shane has pointed out, because I did my fair share of them. The trouble is that what goes up must come down and sometimes you go down a lot further than you thought you would. And you aren't sure if you'll be able to get back up again.
Ironically, I wasn't able to watch Shane's interview on the Frank Skinner Show because I was detoxing at a health farm, and we weren't allowed to watch television. But afterwards, when I saw the video, I felt very sad. Shane is very dear to me and I don't know if I will ever again meet a man that I feel so connected to.
I don't know what would have happened if he had chosen to change his lifestyle, too. Possibly we would be together now. There is no doubt in my mind that abusing alcohol and drugs destroys even the closest of connections.
But whatever might have been, I know that I made the right decision and I'm sticking to it. Sometimes the price of staying together is too high to pay.
Victoria Mary Clarke
[url=http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/index.php3?issue_id=11778]Sunday Independent[/url] © Copyright Unison.ie
