Clarke, Victoria Mary

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CLARKE, Victoria Mary

PERSONAL:

Partner of Shane MacGowan (a musician). Hobbies and other interests: "Angelchanneler," and tarot reader.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Grove Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY.

CAREER:

Music journalist.

WRITINGS:

(With Shane MacGowan) A Drink with Shane MacGowan, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to Lime Lizard and the Irish Post.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A biography of supermodel Kate Moss.

SIDELIGHTS:

Victoria Mary Clarke is a music journalist who has written about many influential musicians, including her long-time partner Shane MacGowan, lead singer of the Irish folk-rock group The Pogues. She met MacGowan in a pub when she was sixteen years old. In an interview with James Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph, Clarke described her first impression of MacGowan, "He was arrogant, stuck-up and not at all attractive. But there are certain people you're destined to fall in love with whether you want to or not." And fall in love she did. As a couple, they have experienced more than most, but not more than a typical rock-and-roll couple. A few decades after their first meeting, MacGowan and Clarke sat down and wrote his biography, A Drink with Shane MacGowan.

Considering Clarke's career and personal life, it only made sense that she coauthor MacGowan's biography. According to a reviewer from M2 Best Books, Clarke was going to write a straightfoward biography but "instead chose to present the reader with the raw interview sessions upon which her book would have been based." The reviewer enjoyed Clarke's choice, calling it "an original device … [and a] benefit of the book as a whole." In it MacGowan—long known for his drunken, erratic, tempermental antics—holds forth in his own, sometimes rambling words, on his childhood in Ireland, the London punk scene of the late '70s, and his larger-than-life misadventures as an unlikely rock star. He also opines on music, drugs, politics, religion, booze, and philosophy. The result is what a critic on the Gadfly Web site called "one of the most unusual memoirs to come along in quite a while." A Publishers Weekly critic remarked, "It's doubtful that even the most diehard fans will find this unedited banter between MacGowan and his missus stimulating." However, Graham Bendel of the New Statesman found the "alcohol-fuelled conversations" to be "at once hilarious, sad and yet constantly edifying." Bendel appreciated the book's "refreshing candor."