In the words of the artist’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, “Shane and Victoria started travelling to Thailand regularly in the late 1980’s after being initiated by Big Charlie, the Pogues road manager who had been a regular visitor to Pattaya, and they visited more than twenty times. Shane wrote most of ‘Hell’s Ditch’ in Pattaya, and actually wrote ‘House of the Gods’ for Nick Cave, but forgot to tell Nick. He also wrote ‘Summer in Siam’ and ‘Sayonara’. The initial attraction for Shane was the vibe of the atmosphere, the ready smiles of the people (Thai tourist posters advertised it as the ‘land of smiles’) the beauty of the Buddha statues and the ready availability of drugs like opium, ‘China White’, valium and weed as well as the hallucinogenic ‘Mekong Whiskey’ and the Singha beer. Shane started hanging out on the beach, sharing joints with dodgy characters and also spent a great deal of time in the wild and crazy late night bars where he played pool with prostitutes and watched the Thai boxing matches, often getting to know the boxers. He was entranced and obsessed by the fast and furious ‘Thai beat’ pop music which was played loud and non-stop, and by stories that he collected about the American soldiers who came from Vietnam during the war to enjoy their ‘r and r’ periods and about the lives of the people who worked in the bars. Thailand became as much of a mythical, mystical, magical place for Shane as Ireland already was, and it inspired a stream of writing, music and art including these two boxers and the Thai teen. Shane had been interested in boxers and boxing ever since he was a small child and he was told stories about the great Irish boxer Jack Doyle who had pissed on his grandfather’s floor. In Thailand, he would spend hours watching the boxers, observing that they were generally very quiet and shy, sipping soft drinks in the corner until it was time to go in the ring and graciously kick the crap out of each other.”