Shane MacGowan’s widow pays tribute to her ‘soulmate’

Shane MacGowan’s widow has paid tribute to her ‘soulmate’ six months after his funeral – and says she doubts she’ll ever find their ‘connection’ with anyone else.

Victoria Mary Clarke, 58, from Dublin, first met her late husband when she was 16 years old at the The Royal Oak pub in North London in December 1982.

The couple – who had a eight year age difference – began dating in 1986 and married in 2018.

Appearing on an upcoming episode of the What a Woman podcast, the Irish journalist has spoken about their early relationship and her grief since Shane’s death at the age of 65 in November 2023. 

Discussing the beginning of their 40-year love story, Victoria recalled in a teaser clip on Instagram: ‘Everything about him was so magnetic and so charismatic.

‘My life changed completely. It was like the missing piece of my life has arrived.’

Opening up about her grief, Victoria continued: ‘When you have a soulmate, you just feel so at one with them.

‘It’s a very deep connection that I’ve never had with anyone else and I don’t even know if it’s possible to have it with anyone else.’ 

In December, Victoria confirmed that Shane – who had also been battling viral encephalitis for eight years – had died of pneumonia, just days after their fifth wedding anniversary.

Announcing Shane’s death on social media, Victoria wrote at the time: ‘I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it.

‘Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.

‘I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures.’

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman Hour, Victoria said shortly after Shane’s death: ‘When I look at his picture, I feel him smiling at me and I actually feel a real smile, a real genuine connection.

‘I feel his love and I feel that connection really strongly. So it’s very hard to feel sad about it, even though I do sometimes burst into tears for my own loss.

‘I can’t feel sad for him because I just really feel he is in a very blissful state.’ 

She then went on to describe their relationship as ‘having a piece of your soul that is in another human form.’ 

Born in Kent to Irish parents on Christmas Day 1957, MacGowan in his autobiography described early childhood summers spent at an Irish farmhouse with his family, drinking, smoking and singing traditional songs.

‘It was like living in a pub,’ he told the Guardian in 2013.

After winning a scholarship to the prestigious Westminster School in London, MacGowan struggled to fit in and was expelled two years later for drug use and started hanging out in London bars with other musicians.

At 17, his alcohol and drug abuse helped trigger a mental breakdown and he was kept in a psychiatric hospital for six months.

After recovering, he embraced the eruption of punk in London in the late 1970s and early 80s.

He brought Irish traditional music to a huge new audience in the late 1980s by splicing it with punk, and achieved mainstream success with his bittersweet, expletive-strewn 1987 Christmas anthem with the Pogues.

Writing in The Guardian in 2009, Victoria said: ‘Once we were together, I felt my own life becoming subsumed by his. This was a welcome feeling for me, as I preferred to live someone else’s life.

‘I took immediate responsibility for his moods and problems and devoted myself to solving them and to being his personal assistant as well as his lover. I worshipped him in every possible way.

‘In return, I felt that he gave me a sense of purpose, as well as a sense of being wanted. I belonged to him in a way that I had never really belonged to my family.’

It was a long courtship for the couple who didn’t get engaged until 2007 and were not married for another 11 years.

They tied the knot in November 2018 at Copenhagen City Hall with Johnny Depp, Shane’s longtime friend, playing the guitar during the low-key ceremony.

Shane’s wife announced in 2016 that he was sober for the ‘first time in several years’ and explained how his drinking problem stemmed from years of ‘singing in bars and clubs where people go to drink and have fun’.

She claimed his spiral into alcohol addiction happened due to the introduction of hard drugs, such as heroin.

The journalist said the singer became sober after a lengthy stay in hospital when he was suffering from pneumonia and a hip injury, and Shane continued his sobriety journey when he returned home.

In an interview with the Irish Mirror, Victoria said she and Shane never had children together because they were too irresponsible. 

She added that she was always worried the musician would burn the house down because he was always dropping his cigarettes.

Shane has suffered physically from years of binge drinking and would often perform on stage drunk.

He began drinking at the tender age of five, when his family gave him Guinness to help him sleep, and his father frequently took him to the local pub while he drank with his friends.