I’ve always been a big fan of The Pogues, and more specifically, Shane MacGowan. Where it started, I’m not quite sure.
Maybe it was the intriguing image of the frontman, complete with a set of teeth that were, well, incomplete, to put it mildly.
Maybe it was because he was born on Christmas Day and wrote arguably the greatest ‘Christmas Song’ of all time.
Maybe it was that he and I shared a surname, even if he had the addition of one letter in his patronymic prefix.
Maybe it was that his lyrics were delivered with an often-guttural sound that was very much at odds with anything that you’d typically hear on an Irish radio station.
Maybe it was the poetic genius of those lyrics that, even as a child and unable to fully appreciate the messages within, stirred something in me and, often whilst supposedly studying for college exams, I’d find myself going down a rabbit hole to discover the hidden meanings, the muses, or simply the explanation for the oft-used slang words which I wasn’t familiar with.
Or maybe it was a combination of all of those, but either way, The Pogues and MacGowan have been a big part of my life for three decades and counting.
Around 15 or 16 years ago, I attended a late-night lock-in at a Dublin city centre premises that recognised that the capital’s bar staff, sober [usually] at closing time, needed a place to unwind before either going home or joining the other revellers at places like Coppers. There, I found myself sitting next to none other than MacGowan at the bar.
Whilst the fan in me was giddy at the prospect of striking up a conversation and maybe even a friendship with a man whose work I’d been in awe of since childhood, the realist in me won out and I turned my back to my namesake and gave my colleagues my full attention because I realised – me being sober and he being not – that there was only one way he was likely to go in my estimations and it wasn’t up.
Besides, he wasn’t short of company, even if it was the sort of company that were ready to ditch him as soon as his wallet emptied or was left unattended.
Don’t meet your heroes, because you’ll be sure to be disappointed. Isn’t that what they say?
I’ve often thought about that moment, and when he passed away just short of his 63rd birthday in 2023, I had no regrets.
And I’ve thought about it often since.
MacGowan wasn’t my only hero, of course, and most came from the sporting world. When Tiger Woods came along and won the Masters by 12 shots in 1997, I was ready to dive headfirst into Tiger-mania.
Over the five or six years that followed, you were either a Tiger guy or a Phil guy, but you couldn’t really be both – not as a teenager anyway.
Sure, there were other players I liked and disliked, and you’d root heavily for the Irish guys who were yet to truly make their mark in the tournaments that mattered most, but when it came to head-to-head battles between golf’s two biggest rivals, I’d picked my side.
Thankfully, by the time that Woods’ scandal broke in late 2009, I was still infatuated with the golfer, but I’d long separated my affiliations with the red and black-clad god that strode the fairways on Sundays from the man he was off it.
I’d even rooted for Mickelson on occasion, and when he dropped all to be by his wife’s side when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, it appeared as though, while Woods might hold the bragging rights on course, it was Phil who was the superior being off it.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and the fall from grace of both individuals has been stark.
I love a drink, so I could never be critical of MacGowan’s weakness when it came to alcohol. I love a bet, so I could never be critical of Mickelson’s high-stakes action. I’ve never sustained the sort of debilitating injuries Woods has, so I can only imagine the physical and mental toll that comes with them.
But we now know that those are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the latter duo.
The latest allegations involving Mickelson, if Golf Digest’s reporting is to be believed and one can only assume that in making such an allegation, they’ve got all their legal ducks in a row, threatens to complete his fall from grace.
People have been willing to forgive him for his dalliance with a regime who he admitted were murderous and ‘scary mother****ers’, though it took some time. They were willing to overlook him being investigated by the FBI for insider trading because, firstly, he wasn’t found guilty and secondly, when it comes to criminal activity, the white-collar variety is much easier to stomach anyway.
But allegations of sexual misconduct are a different story. Even if he’s truly innocent, it carries a stigma that is virtually impossible to wash off.
Tiger’s infidelities hurt his public image and hurt his (then) wife in a way that’s impossible to imagine unless you were in her shoes, but they weren’t illegal. In fact, he was only doing what lots of men all over the world do – and have done – on a regular basis.
By repeatedly getting behind the wheel in an unfit state and putting others’ lives at risk, however, he strayed beyond the confines of the law and it’s hard for anybody who’s lost a loved one to, or been seriously injured by, an impaired driver to offer up forgiveness in the manner they may have done in the past. And they’re well within their rights not to.
There is a world in which a truly contrite Woods, post-rehabilitation, can acknowledge his mistakes, can own them, and can recover some of the public goodwill that he’s spent the best part of two-decades trying to lose, but it’s a long road ahead and perhaps finding peace within himself is the more pressing and greater challenge.
Mickelson’s road back is steeper still, and one that I’m not sure he has the vehicle to scale.
But do we either want or need Woods and Mickelson back? The sport increasingly feels as though it’s moving on. Sure, they were once great warriors and their heyday performances are ones that will live long in the memories of anyone fortunate to have witnessed them either in person or on TV, but those days are long gone and the water under the bridge has increasingly become sour.
Maybe it’s time to let them go altogether. To remember them as the great athletes they once were but to always have that asterisk beside their names for their actions outside the ropes.
Maybe, it’s time to turn our backs on them like I did to MacGowan in that bar all those years ago.
And maybe it’s one of Shane’s lyrics that says it best…
If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried ‘neath the sod
But the angels won’t receive me
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry
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