Pickled Faggots: Shane McGowan Is Alive
IS Shane McGowan still alive? He is, although it is not immediately obvious.
The Mirror produces a picture of Shane collapsed on a hotel bed, a bottle of something yellowy in one hand, yesterday’s clothes still on and eyes closed. (Shane was educated at Westminster school. He was ever the public school boy.)
Tomorrow is McGowan’s 50th birthday. Born on Christmas Day, McGowan shares a birthday with Isaac Newton, Humphrey Bogart and Jesus.
And unlike them he is alive. To prove it McGowan takes a slug from the bottle and tells us: “To be honest, I never thought too much about getting to 50. But if everybody is making a bet that you are going to die at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon you just tend to think, ‘Fuck it, I’m not going to die as long as those fuckers are alive.”
McGowan is kept alive on a pickling process of two parts belligerence to one part retsina, and any other flammable liquids.
And there is another reason Shane is in the news. It’s not just that it’s his birthday, he’s having his teeth done to ”stop my face falling apart” and he’s living a journalist’s dream life, but that his song Fairy Tale of New York is in the charts once more.
McGowan rose to prominence as front man of the Pogues, successful “Because we weren’t a faggot and a guy with a synthesiser”. He later insisted: “I’ve got nothing against faggots.”
And he should not. Faggots have helped make his Christmas song a hit once again. The tune features the line “You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot”.
The BBC decided that upon hearing the word “faggot”, listeners would be driven mad and find cause to beat seven shades of the black stuff from anyone who’d ever heard of the Pet Shop Boys.
And thanks to the BBC’s control freakery, the songs been in the news, and Shane should earn some more money in royalties and remain in the style to which he has become almost enviably accustomed…
Posted: 24th, December 2007 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
