Shane MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clark pays tribute to her “soul mate” seven months after the Pogues singer’s death

By Lydia Hawken for Mailonline

10:02 June 25, 2024, updated 10:33 June 25, 2024

Six months after Shane MacGowan’s funeral, the widow has paid tribute to her “soulmate” – and says she doubts she will ever find the “connection” between the pair with anyone else.

Victoria Mary Clarke, 58, from Dublin, met her late husband for the first time at the age of 16 in December 1982 at The Royal Oak pub in north London.

The couple, who have an eight-year age difference, began dating in 1986 and married in 2018.

In an upcoming episode of the podcast “What a Woman,” the Irish journalist talks about the couple’s early relationship and her grief since Shane’s death at the age of 65 in November 2023.

Speaking about 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 as if the missing piece of my life had arrived.”

Victoria spoke about her grief and continued: “When you have a soul mate, you just feel 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 battled viral encephalitis for eight years – had died of pneumonia just days after their fifth wedding anniversary.

When Victoria announced Shane’s death on social media, she wrote at the time: “I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to say it.”

“Shane, who will always be the light before my eyes, and the measure of my dreams, and the love of my life, and the most beautiful soul, and the most beautiful angel, and the sun and the moon, and the beginning and the end of all that is dear to me, has gone to be with Jesus, Mary, and his beautiful mother Therese.

“I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been loved so infinitely and unconditionally by him and to have been able to experience 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 shortly after Shane’s death, Victoria said: “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 that connection is really strong. That’s why it’s very hard to be sad about it, although sometimes I burst into tears because of my own loss.

“I can’t feel sorry for him because I just feel like he’s in a very blissful state.”

She then described her relationship as: “A piece of one’s own soul in another human form.”

MacGowan was born to Irish parents in Kent on Christmas Day 1957. In his autobiography, he describes the summers of his early childhood spent with his family on an Irish farm, 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 found it difficult to fit in. Two years later, he was expelled from school for drug use and began hanging out with other musicians in London bars.

At age 17, his alcohol and drug abuse contributed to a nervous breakdown and he was placed in a psychiatric hospital for six months.

After his recovery, he took part in the emergence of punk in London in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In the late 1980s, he brought Irish folk music to a huge new audience by combining it with punk, and achieved mainstream success with his bittersweet, swear-filled Christmas anthem with the Pogues in 1987.

In a 2009 Guardian article, Victoria wrote: “When we were together, I felt like my own life was being consumed by his. That was a welcome feeling for me, as I would rather be living someone else’s life.”

“I immediately took responsibility for his whims and problems and devoted myself to solving them, and was both his personal assistant and his lover. I adored him in every way possible.”

“In return, I felt like he gave me purpose and made me feel wanted. I belonged to him in a way that I never really belonged to my family.”

It was a long period of love between the couple, who only got engaged in 2007 and married 11 years later.

They tied the knot in Copenhagen City Hall in November 2018. Johnny Depp, Shane’s long-time boyfriend, played guitar during the simple ceremony.

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

She claimed that his descent into alcohol addiction was caused by the use of hard drugs such as heroin.

The journalist said the singer became sober after a lengthy hospital stay during which he suffered from pneumonia and a hip injury, and Shane continued his path of abstinence even after returning 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 afraid that the musician would burn down the house because he kept dropping cigarettes.

Shane suffered physically from the effects of years of excessive drinking and often appeared on stage drunk.

He started 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.