Shane MacGowan's widow has given an insight into her life with the late rocker life as he battled drug and alcohol addiction.
Journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, 57, was just 16 when she met The Pogues frontman in a north London pub and they soon started hanging out and she would go to his gigs. They then married some 32 years later in 2018 at an intimate ceremony in Denmark.
Opening up in a new interview with The Guardian's G2, Clarke admitted that she always wanted to reform the Fairytale of New York hit-maker, but it was simply not to be. She would organise a dinner party and "someone would fall off the roof". "He set fire to hotel rooms that we stayed in - while we were in them, because of the acid. We were very much living on the edge of destruction," she recalled.
She also discussed the heartbreak of finding him in bed with groupies, saying: "I would punch him and run out and say: 'Right, that's it, I'm never coming back!' But then I'd get my own flat and just wouldn't be able to stay away."
When asked by the publication about the well-documented time that someone overdosed and died on their living room floor, she was nonchalant.
She said: "Oh there's been plenty of that kind of stuff. That wouldn't have been the only one. Plenty of people dying all the time. There seemed to be an inevitability about that. And Shane always seemed to be the only one who was destined to survive."
MacGowan died "peacefully" in the early hours of the morning on November 30 after battling a brain condition for eight years.
His funeral took place in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, almost a fortnight ago and was televised across the world.
His church service saw hundreds of people locked out with standing room only after thousands lined the route of his casket in Dublin and Nenagh. Hollywood actor Johnny Depp, who was a long-time friend of the musician, acted as a pallbearer.
