At home with: Victoria Mary Clarke

Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane MacGowan ended up living in a two-storey red-brick late Victorian house in the Donnybrook suburb of Dublin more by default than design. As she explained to Hot Press, “When we started looking for a house in Dublin about a year ago, we suspected some landlords mightn’t be happy with Shane as a tenant. I can’t think why! So we hired a female friend to do some checking around estate agents. Our suspicions were well-founded, but she found us this lovely house across the road from where she herself lives. By coincidence, my mother was born in a house in Herbert Park, so I’ve known this area since I was a kid, and it feels very safe.”
You might suspect that a house containing such media figures would need a revolving door to cater for an endless queue of celebrity visitors...
“We actively discourage visitors, especially celebrities! The only visitors we encourage are those who know how to go home at a reasonable hour. Getting rid of people can be really hard, and journalists are the worst. One from an American magazine came to interview us, and ended up lying on the floor, out of it. Myself and Shane had to drag him back to his guest house across the road. And then he lied about it in the article, claiming that Shane was drunk. Sinead O’Connor is the only person we’ve had around recently that you might call a celebrity. We probably wouldn’t mind if Madonna popped round, because she’d be fairly quiet.”
One of the advantages of Donnybrook is its proximity to the beating heart of Dublin City and all its attractions. “We’re actually so close to the centre that you can cycle to anywhere in about five minutes," she says. "I often cycle, except when it’s raining.” Somehow I can’t picture Shane as a cyclist. “It’s on his to-do list,” she says, with a hearty laugh.
Despite being close to traffic-laden streets, the house is a haven and a workplace for both inhabitants. “We need privacy to concentrate. Sometimes I go to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig to write, and Shane has his own house in Tipperary. But I have a workroom upstairs here where I write and I practice yoga which I hope to teach soon. Shane has a room downstairs for playing music and songwriting, which is completely trashed."
Both are avid readers and music fans, so it’s no surprise that the house has loads of books and records, with others in storage. “When you move house a lot, stuff just tends to disappear, but we have lots of records and books, from the classics to trashy novels. Shane has lots of history books. I’m reading The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller. I think the last book Shane read was about the former Archbishop of Dublin McQuaid, the guy who wanted de Valera to make the Catholic Church part of the constitution. Shane’s favourite novelists are all dead, but he reads mystery books."
As for music listening habits, they go through phases. “These days we’re playing lots of The Rolling Stones. Before that, we went through a time of only playing Van Morrison, and we played nothing but Astral Weeks for a couple of months. I think it comes from some kind of obsessive nature. It’s the same with Nick Cave or Bobby Gillespie or Pete Doherty. We just play them over and over."
Victoria enjoys cooking vegetarian meals. “I’ll eat meat if I’m out, but I don’t like handling it raw,” she explains, adding that Shane has even started to dabble at the cooking thing. “We had his manager around for dinner the other night and Shane did this Moroccan Chick-pea Stew at about 4 in the morning and his manager ate a load of it and loved it.” When I point out that an artist’s manager might have good reason for praising any creative product of his charge, she rebuffs my scepticism. “He actually thought I had made it (laughs).”
And then there’s the alleged ghost. “I’ve never seen any ghost myself, but Shane has always maintained the house is haunted by a benign ghost, and he recently said he actually saw a ghost in the house which he thought was quite nasty.” I ask her if this was after the Night Of The Moroccan Chick-pea Stew, and she admits that it was.
They both watch a lot of TV. “Shane’s a big fan of Fair City. We both watched Fáilte Towers and thought it was terrific. We bet on Don Baker, but I wasn’t surprised John Creedon won. He came over like a really nice guy. Sometimes nice guys win. I also watch Xpose on TV3, because I’m on it!”
DIY and gardening are not on the agenda. “Neither myself nor Shane have any skills in DIY, not even the basics.”
So how did Shane hold down a job as a janitor in the Indian Embassy in London without the basics? Victoria reckons he must have “unlearned them” since then, and admits that he has no interest in doing a refresher course. As for gardening, she wonders if tending three flower pots could be classed as some kind of gardening. I don’t think so...
The house is replete with artworks, most of which were painted either by Clarke herself or her relatives. “My grandfather’s sculptures are probably my favourites. We have so many artworks we can’t display them all, but I’m currently preparing for my own exhibition at the gallery in the English Market in Cork in October.”
So what might prompt her to leave this house? “Ideally, I’d live in a much bigger house, with a big ballroom where I could have a disco and dancing, and maybe a cinema room, library and so on. Maybe someday...” If Shane would only put down that skillet, nip into his room and knock off a couple of songs like ‘Fairytale of New York’, he could solve that problem pronto.

Victoria Clarke's book Angel In Disguise? is out now on The Collins Press