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Sorry, ladies. Ireland's bachelor number one is getting hitched.

(The Irish Independent) Call it 'Fairytale of Dublin': rock's most charismatic couple Shane MacGowan and Victoria Clarke are engaged. Victoria's father, Tom, helped her pick out a beautiful emerald ring in Dublin recently.

Of course, given libertine Shane's involvement, the engagement did not come without certain difficulties. Victoria accepted the proposal from Shane (her on/off boyfriend of 16 years) in Dublin at the end of The Pogues tour after Christmas, but broke off the engagement a week later, after a row.

She caught him smoking in their kitchen in South Circular Road, Dublin, (Victoria had set the house accidentally on fire two weeks before and had banned smoking.) The damage to their relationship - and possibly to the house too - has been repaired because last week the couple returned from a holiday in Tangiers and immediately told their parents of their plans to marry in September. There'll be streams of whiskey - and their BFs Kate Moss and Pete Doherty - at the engagement party in Boogaloo in London next month.

Shane has never looked happier. Why wouldn't he? Witnesses say the singer's smile was as broad and majestic as the Shannon when Victoria finally said yes, after years of him asking her.

Victoria is hoping that the wedding - the venue for which she hasn't decided on yet, though it will be in either Ireland or England - will be a like a mini festival in "a muddy field like Glastonbury with people queueing up for beer and champagne". Prada Wellingtons at the ready, so.

"It was at Spider Stacy's [of the Pogues] wedding to Louise in Las Vegas last summer that I realised how much I wanted to marry Shane," Victoria told me. "Shane sang Elvis songs that night. At our wedding, he will have the night off. I'm hoping Nick Cave will write and perform a special song for the occasion. It's going to be heaven."

I'd give a few of my teeth to make the guest list for that wedding.