Shane has a post on the Guardian blog:
Shane’s blog from the Guardian - sorry if posted before:
Shane’s yule blog: where there’s no smoke there’s ire
I can’t believe how severely the smoking ban is enforced up here in Scotland, where I’ve been playing a gig with The Pogues - and recovering from posing naked with Pete Doherty.
Shane MacGowan
Lighting up… Shane MacGowan is still smoking on stage despite the bans in Scotland and Ireland. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty
I’m dictating this down the phone to my dandy Boswell, Mr Edwards of Highgate. I’m in a hotel in Glasgow, on tour with the band. We’ve just played a couple of nights here. The crowd were great, the band were heavy, I was brilliant as usual.
We’ve started dusting off stuff like Waxie’s Dargle - which is one of the songs I tell the uninitiated to check out if they want to hear something beyond Fairytale Of New York. Lots of Celtic tricolors in the audience and a generally great atmosphere. Celtic beat Man U to get into Europe this year, after everybody being worried about Martin O’Neill leaving and all that.
So the Glaswegians seem pretty happy, albeit pissed off about something else - the smoking ban. The ban is simply incredible up here - the enforcement is tougher than you could believe. Certainly compared to Dublin. Back there the fuss has comparatively died away. There are areas divided up into smoking and non-smoking and so on, and there are a lot of blind eyes being turned for the sake of the “auld boys”. And rightly so - it’s all about personal freedom and personal choice, and city air is damaging enough as it is, so you might as well choose your own filter.
But in Glasgow the police really go for the ban in strength. Some of us were smoking onstage on account it being part of our time-honoured performance, as it were, but the audience was clearly feeling the eyes of the ban upon them. It was tangible. The moment we left the stage for good, the crowd dashed outside purely to smoke. And it’s not as if the Scots were pressurised into the ban in the first place. I think it’s that tough, gutsy Scottish will-power thing - “We can jump about pissed to Irish rock and roll music AND we can do it without smoking!”
What else? Fairytale has gone back up the singles charts of its own accord, with zero marketing. As if by magic. Well, I’m told it’s by internet downloads. Which might as well be magic for some of us. And I had my photograph taken with Mr Doherty recently. It was by Mario Testino, at some studio in Shepherds Bush. Nothing particularly unusual, except he asked us to be naked together. Which was pretty unexpected. What’s more unexpected is that we obliged. So there’s an image for you to look out for.
rin go Bragh!!!
Sen Mac Gabhan
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/12/where_theres_no_smoke_theres_i.html
