Doctors told Shane MacGowan he'd die six months after meeting widow Victoria Mary Clarke

Dublin Live

08-06-2025

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Shane MacGowan's widow has told how doctors told The Pogues frontman he would die within six months of the pair getting together back in the 1980s.
Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane met over 40 years ago, before tying the knot in Copenhagen in 2018. But Victoria was dealt a devastating blow when the Tipperary star passed away in November 2023 at the age of 65 after multiple health complications.
However, she admitted she had been preparing since the 80s for his death after many doctors gave the rock star only months to live, even back then. Speaking on The Grief Pod with Venetia Quick, Victoria said: "It was quite often that he would be told he would be dead soon. And that started when we got together.
"So starting in the 80s, people told me he'd be dead very soon. I remember, like, pretty much as soon as we got together, somebody said, 'Oh, well, he'll be dead in six months'.
"A doctor that we used to go to in London, she told Shane that he would be dead in six months, and she is now dead herself. Well, in fact, two of his doctors are dead, having told Shane that he would be dead. So, you know, it was definitely on my mind a lot, and it was something that I was afraid of very much.
"And when I thought about it, I couldn't picture anything but misery. I couldn't picture anything but total despair." Shane died in November 2023 and Victoria opened up about how she has coped with the grief since The Fairytale of New York hitmaker's passing.
"There's been plenty of days like that, where I've been phoning the Samaritans and I have fully felt that I wanted to end it all," she explained. But she said she has recently qualified as a sound healer and used the power of sound and meditation to help her cope with grief.
"I'm sure anyone who's listening, who's familiar with grief, will notice that it does heighten emotion and it dysregulates the nervous system," she added. "So you're kind of all over the place, and you're panicked, and you haven't got clear thoughts. And you feel very vulnerable. You feel very fragile.
"Yeah, you feel like your emotions are running you. You can't really stop them. So there's a lot of turbulence. So it is a bit like being thrown in the sea with a lot of waves crashing around. And then you really have to kind of discipline yourself to remember this is just turbulence, and underneath, at the bottom of the ocean, there is a calm, still place, and I've got to try and get there.
"Recently, I just qualified as a sound healer, so I find that sound is one of the most powerful... but also really fast to bring me into a state of total calm, and it's faster than Valium. I've tried Valium and Xanax, and actually using a gong is faster. So I'm doing things like that."
But Victoria said she still talks to the 65-year-old every day since his passing, admitting she feels Shane's presence all around her. And she told the host that he is happy in the afterlife, adding: "He's happy, and he does talk to me, and he does tell me many times. He's told me many times, so I'm aware of that, and it does help, because I know that he really, really had a lot of pain and suffering and struggle with his body, so it is a relief for him. He's out of it.
"I do tell [talk to] him, and I feel he is there. So I suppose that's one of the things that's maybe in my toolbox in that I have had an interest in the non-physical or the spiritual since I was a kid.
"So I started talking to light-beings and fairies and, you know, trees and all these things as a child. And I became interested in channelling in my 20s, and I've been channelling for about 30 years, so sometimes I'll channel people who have been human. Like most of the time, I channel light beings and angels who've never been human.
"But now occasionally I'll be channelling people as well. And so I was always aware that if anything happened to one of us, the other one would still be able to communicate with them, because we'd just carry on the conversation like channelling. And, you know, that's not so easy to do with somebody that you're very attached to emotionally. It's much easier to do with somebody you've never met. But with Shane, it's a little bit more, you know, intense, but he's very determined. So he finds every possible opportunity.
"He comes through in writing mainly, or he'll just put a thought in my head, or he'll try and, like, dance with me, and he'll, like, move me or he'll send energy to me so I can feel the energy that it's sending. Or he will come through other people. So he comes through psychic mediums that I go to, but he also comes through friends.
"You know, a couple of my friends recently have said, 'Oh my god, Shane is bashing me on the shoulder and going tell her this'. And they're like, why is he trying to talk through me?'
"And I guess he just will talk through anyone who will listen," she added. But Victoria said she finds it comforting to know he is still around her.
"I know that he's aware of me, and I know that he can, like, see me, and if I write to him, I know that he can see and read what I've written, and so that that is good, and it's not the same as your physical person, and it's not the same as feeling them or hearing their voice or any of those things." Victoria also mentioned how her late husband would've enjoyed "the fuss" of his funeral.
"It was something that he would have enjoyed, and I know he was enjoying it. I mean, I think he was really, really enjoying the whole thing, all the fuss, because Shane was a guy who really loved people, and he loved to connect with people," she said.
And she admitted that MacGowan being a public figure has helped her cope with his death. She said: "I was, in some ways, very fortunate that Shane was a public figure, because it meant that his death was acknowledged.
"I think that for anyone listening, who has lost somebody, or is feeling, like, bereft or bereaved, that, you know, when other people do even a small gesture, like, you know, doing a mass card, or a bunch of flowers or whatever it is, I think every gesture helps."
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