By Mia O'Hare
Shane MacGowan once asked for an apple so that he could smoke crack, according to Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson.
The former The Voice judge recalled his unusual encounter with Shane while they were appearing at a festival together. He admitted he was "starstruck" in the early days of his band and would often stare at other artists while locked away in their dressing rooms. It meant Ricky had quite the shock when the late Pogues star knocked on the Kaiser Chiefs' door.
He recalled the incident following Shane's tragic death last year aged 65 following a series of illnesses that had left him in hospital. The music icon was discharged and was able to celebrate his fifth wedding anniversary to his wife Victoria at home before tragically dying "peacefully" days later.
Ricky has shared with theGuardian: "He was amazing. He asked for an apple from our rider. I thought: 'Good for you, Shane, one of your five a day!' We didn’t realise he was going to smoke crack out of it." At his funeral on December 8, Victoria documented the extent of Shane's battle with drugs and revealed he would once take "100 tabs of acid per day". She added that she once found Shane, who had been locked in the bathroom, for five hours, speaking to a dead Irish poet.
The Kaiser Chiefs - consisting of lead singer Ricky, guitarist Andrew White, bassist and backing vocalist Simon Rix, keyboard player Nick Baines and Vijay Mistry - have had many wild experiences at their live shows. Last year, the Ruby hitmakers revealed to The Mirror a fan went into cardiac arrest at one of their shows but hours later, was booted out of a local pub for being too drunk. Simon told us: "You could tell in the last song that someone was having a hard time. We went off and waited to do the encore. We were told to wait as someone had had a heart attack in the crowd.
"They got them out and they were doing the whole tent thing then he was ok, they brought him back to life, we got told he was ok and we got told 'You can go back on and do another song you can, you don't have to', we went and did another song, it was good – we went home because we were in Halifax and we were playing Piece Hall again."
He added: "When we got to the venue, I was like 'Oh how was the guy? Is he alright? Did he have to go to the hospital? Can we do anything?' One of our crew was like 'Oh yeah, I saw him at midnight getting kicked out of a pub for being too drunk' - it's not a crazy fan story but it's a crazy gig story. Someone died, then was alive, brought back to life just to get drunk."
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