| They don't make Irish drunks like they used to... The Independent By John Walsh 14 February 2001 Wonderful tales are leaking out of Bloom's Hotel, in the heart of Dublin's banking district. Somewhere within this charming, luxurious retreat, temporary home to countless Euro-entrepreneurs and myriad dot-com impresariosin sharp Hugo Boss suits and Oliver Sweeney shoes, Shane MacGowan is sitting in a slurred heap. The ex-singer and front man of The Pogues, the legendary London-Irish folk-rock band, and The Popes, a kind of pale-green simulacrum of the former, MacGowan has been in the hotel since 17 January - that is, for almost a month. He has been unable to leave the premises because he has run up a drinks bill at the bar in excess of ?2,000, and is unable, or unwilling, to pay it. He clings to a conviction that his publishers, Macmillan, should pay, since they're the ones publishing his book, provocatively entitled A Drink With Shane MacGowan, and the sample chapter that was sent to lucky literary editors has the words "Come and have a drink..." (now that really is asking for trouble) emblazoned across the title page. Some people have indeed responded to the publishers' kind offer. They have pitched up in Dublin on the early flight with their slimline briefcases and Sanyo voice-activated, state-of-the-art tape equipment, each convinced that they alone will be able to penetrate the carapace of befuddlement and hostility that Mr MacGowan carries about with him like a six-foot Irish turtle. They have, so far, got precisely nowhere. Reporters from the national British dailies and the Irish provincial press alike have retreated with (they report in hushed whispers) not one single useable sentence to justify their hour in MacGowan's company. The book itself, whose pre-launch festivities are causing such trouble, is a two-hander with MacGowan's admirable girlfriend, Victoria Mary Clarke, a Cork beauty who thinks her beloved "unique and magnificent, and besides being a genius, he's the most intelligent man I know and the most interesting". The great man's interestingness is scarcely borne out by the conversations recorded in the book, which tend to deal with such topics as his liking for beetroot and his fascination for wife-beating scenes on celluloid. Like many people, I admire MacGowan's songwriting skill to the point of idolatry, and am prepared to argue for his stuff being at least as "unique" and "magnificent" as the lyrics of that bleached, gum-chewing halfwit, Eminem. But as an Irish drunk, Shane is a sad disappointment. A promising starter at 18 and 19, regularly getting his head kicked in for winding up stupid Londoners, he graduated to sullen incoherence just too soon. Some people peak too early; MacGowan troughed too early. He lost the facility of impromptu performance that spurs on every true Irish drunk to greater and greater excess. Brendan Behan in his cups could never be silent. He might vomit copiously mid-song onto the carpet of McDaid's pub, but he'd always finish the song, note-perfect. Patrick Kavanagh was a two-fisted, chip-on-shoulder farm boy from Monaghan, determined, when moggleyore, to show the swinish townies how to start a fight (and finish it). Luke Kelly, who sang with The Dubliners, could recite Louis MacNeice at will, and his voice sounded better and better, the more he drank. These guys set the gold standard of pissed Irish swagger, and plenty of musicians (like Christy Moore) followed them into the Happy Hunting Grounds of liver-damaged heroism. What they did not do was sit in well-appointed hotel rooms, running up a four-figure tab and having nothing to say to the Recording Angels of History grouped around them. Mr MacGowan has let the side down badly |