In the words of the artist’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, “Shane spent his eighteenth birthday in a mental hospital, after having been diagnosed with ‘acute situational anxiety’ and incarcerated for six months. He had been trying to medicate himself for anxiety but had had a nervous breakdown. The mental hospital convinced him that he was sane, but he says he came out of it seething with anger. The first band that he saw after being released was The Sex Pistols. Shane recognised them as kindred spirits, ‘a very angry band’ and he recognised Johnny ‘Rotten’ Lydon as being a lot like him, a London Irish boy who was not going to take any shit for being Irish. Shane started to hang around with the band and became a close friend of Sid Vicious who nicknamed him ‘Bondage’ because of Shane’s self produced ‘Bondage’ fanzine. In footage of the Pistols from their short career, Shane can often be seen pogoing at the front, often in a Union Jack shirt.. Shane had always projected the image of being tough and he was impressed with the Pistols ‘front’. And also by the fact that they were good musicians and they were into pissing people off and provoking people. And he respected the fact that Johnny was a good Catholic who loved his mother and was proud of being working class, and also because Shane recognised him as a brilliant writer and performer. He even tried to imitate Johnny’s hair colour by dyeing his own hair a startling shade of orange, but the dye ran down his face and looked like blood, and eventually he opted for bleached blond instead."