Before he became famous as a tin whistle player with the Pogues (his signature act was bashing his head with a beer tray in time to the music), Spider Stacy had a day job in London. From 1977 to 1979, he worked in a Renault garage as a workshop cleaner. One day, one of the directors noticed his matinee idol looks, and insisted on making him a car salesman on the spot.
“I couldn’t drive – and I still can’t,” Spider says. “So, they gave me driving lessons, 23 of them. I was as much of a f**king menace after the 23rd lesson as I was after the first one.” He had, however, a good patter. And considering he couldn’t drive, he sold more than his fair share of cars.
He would get the garage cleaner to take potential car buyers out for a test drive. “George had a glass eye and was deaf in one ear because he had been caught in a shell blast on D Day. He was like a character from a Pogues’ song. He was f**king brilliant.”
Even allowing for exaggeration, Spider is brilliant too, writes Barry Egan, and spending three hours with him recently was a minor revelation. The Pogues tin-whistler is impressively raw and real. He is also drain-pipe skinny. In his tight-fitting black suit, he looks like he has been teleported from 1980s London.
But Spider is a different man from the larger-than-life libertine who used to drink until dawn and beyond with Shane et al in The Columbia hotel in Lancaster Gate in the late 1980s.
“I don’t know if I ever felt I had to play up to that image,” he says, “I just became way too fond of a drink. I liked that lifestyle. I liked staying up all night drinking – to my detriment.” Drinking, he says, very much became a problem. So much so that in 1993, he tried to give up. “It was all miserable towards the end,” he says meaning the end of his drinking, “but once the fog had cleared, I was really relieved.”
: Steve Humphreys
“I couldn’t drive – and I still can’t,” Spider says. “So, they gave me driving lessons, 23 of them. I was as much of a f**king menace after the 23rd lesson as I was after the first one.” He had, however, a good patter. And considering he couldn’t drive, he sold more than his fair share of cars.
He would get the garage cleaner to take potential car buyers out for a test drive. “George had a glass eye and was deaf in one ear because he had been caught in a shell blast on D Day. He was like a character from a Pogues’ song. He was f**king brilliant.”
Even allowing for exaggeration, Spider is brilliant too, writes Barry Egan, and spending three hours with him recently was a minor revelation. The Pogues tin-whistler is impressively raw and real. He is also drain-pipe skinny. In his tight-fitting black suit, he looks like he has been teleported from 1980s London.
But Spider is a different man from the larger-than-life libertine who used to drink until dawn and beyond with Shane et al in The Columbia hotel in Lancaster Gate in the late 1980s.
“I don’t know if I ever felt I had to play up to that image,” he says, “I just became way too fond of a drink. I liked that lifestyle. I liked staying up all night drinking – to my detriment.” Drinking, he says, very much became a problem. So much so that in 1993, he tried to give up. “It was all miserable towards the end,” he says meaning the end of his drinking, “but once the fog had cleared, I was really relieved.”
: Steve Humphreys
