I’d never say we were really friends, and we came from very different backgrounds. But as fellow punks of the same age (he was born on Christmas Day just 16 days before me) Shane and I had an acquaintance.
A drinking acquaintance, you might say. I used to knock about with him now and then in the pubs around Highbury, Hackney, where I lived, and Holloway, where he lived. He was already a notorious character on the punk scene because of that ear-biting incident that earned him an NME cover.
Back then he had a London accent and because of his name I remember asking him about his Irish background, which he said was limited to his family’s annual summer holiday to see an auntie in Tipperary.
I’d regularly go and see his first band The Nipple Erectors – later abbreviated to The Nips in the vain hope that a radio station might play one of their raucous punkabilly tunes. I’m not sure they ever did.
Spotting each other at the urinals, I made a joke about how I hadn’t expected to find him celebrating a royal wedding – which of course neither of us were – and asked him if The Nips were still going.
“Nah, I’ve got a new band now,” he said. “We’re called Pogue Mahone – it means ‘Kiss My Arse’ in Irish.”
“Is it still a mixture of punk and rockabilly?” I asked.
“Not any more. It’s a mix of punk and traditional Irish music,” he chuckled.
“Don’t suppose we’ll be seeing you on Top of the Pops with that then!” I chortled back.
“Course not,” he said. “It’s just for a laugh.”
And so it was that The Pogues were born, without any expectation of stardom for their dentally challenged frontman, or any commercial success for their rowdy repertoire of raucous folk-punk tomfoolery.
And the occasional beautiful bucolic moment like this, my favourite Pogues song.