THE effects of years of alcohol and heroin have left Shane MacGowan needing 24-hour care.
His wife Victoria Mary Clarke has said she wants to keep him “alive as long as possible” as she asks fans to send prayers as the musician was rushed to hospital on December 5, 2022.
AlamyShane MacGowan and Victoria Mary Clarke at the Lincoln film premiere Savoy Cinema in Dublin in January 2013.[/caption]
Who is Victoria Mary Clarke?
Victoria Mary Clarke is an Irish journalist and writer.
Born on January 11, 1966, she has written for various newspapers and magazines in Britain and Ireland.
She lives in Dublin with Shane and teaches workshops for people who want to learn how to channel their own angel guidance.
“I channel angel guidance for myself any time that I am not happy with a situation in my life, and for other people when they are not happy with a situation in their lives,” she writes on her website.
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Victoria says she first made contact with angels while struggling to overcome depression.
In 2007, she wrote a book about her conversations with the angels who helped her through her hard times called Angel In Disguise.
When did Victoria marry Shane MacGowan?
Pogues singer Shane first met Victoria when she was just 16 years old and he was 24.
Although the pair didn’t begin a relationship until four years later, the writer says how she quickly became infatuated with him.
“Shane was unmissable, tall, pale and skinny, with jug ears and missing teeth,” Victoria writes in the Irish Independent. “I was awe-struck by him.
“I became consumed by the thought of him. He says that he felt the same way, that we were destined to be together.”
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 Shane’s longtime friend, Johnny Depp, playing the guitar during the ceremony.
In January 2009, Victoria opened up about how she craved physical affection from men in her teens and that Shane gave her a “sense of purpose”.
Writing in The Guardian, she 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.”
Do they have any children?
Shane and victoria do not have any children.
In April 2022, Victoria revealed the reason the pair never had children together was that they were too irresponsible.
She also mentioned that she was always worried about the musician health as he has suffered physically from years of binge drinking and would often perform on stage drunk.
At the age of five, his family would reportedly give him Guinness to help him sleep, and his father frequently took him to the local pub while he drank with his friends.
In 2016, Victoria announced that Shane was sober for the “first time in several years”.
According to Clarke, the musician’s sobriety began after a prolonged hospital stay due to pneumonia and a hip injury, and he continued to stay clean when he returned home.