Shane MacGowan’s death and his star-studded funeral captured the headlines this week. But the fawning and fanfare felt oddly dissonant to me: was I the only person in the media who never cared for him? I’m used to not holding the same opinions as most people in my profession; this is quite understandable, as only 19 per cent of British journalists were educated at comprehensive schools, as I was, and a minuscule number swerved ‘uni’, as I was blessed to. But I’m sceptical that many of those amongst my people of origin, the English working class, shared the media’s adulation for MacGowan.

To us, MacGowan was a phoney: an Irish republican born in Kent and educated at an English prep (Holmewood House) and public school (Westminster). As soft-handed middle-class men often do, he had a para-sexual pash on paramilitary men – think of Alan Partridge’s fantasy of lap-dancing for a brute in a balaclava. He counted Gerry Adams as a friend, and called Dominic McGlinchey (leader of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a group responsible for numerous murders) ‘a great man’ after writing a song about him.

The stoic words of the widow MacGowan speak more to me than the over-emotional thrash of her late husband’s songs

Not being a member of the IRA was one of his few regrets. ‘I was ashamed I didn’t have the guts to join the IRA, and The Pogues was my way of overcoming that,’ he said. Compare this bourgeois stumblebum with the hardcore working-class politics of those other English Irishmen, Steven Morrissey and John Lydon. If Jeremy Corbyn had been a pop singer, he would surely have been Shane MacGowan: both men went to posh schools but somehow ended up as champions of the working class.

But there is one thing I like about MacGowan, and that’s his widow, Victoria Mary Clarke. Speaking on Good Morning Britain, she said: ‘I thought that I would fall apart. I thought I’d die, I thought I’d not be able to speak, or go on drugs myself – something like that…I want you all to know it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be.’ Reading that, it struck me how very rarely we hear anyone say anything unexpected and/or original; the death of a loved one is not as bad as you think it will be.

Regularly, some soppy sociologist will pop up on Radio 4 and say, as though it’s absolutely the first time, that ‘Death is the last taboo’ and that one thing we could learn from the Victorians is how to mourn properly. Are they having a laugh? You can’t get away from people ululating in public, from those kids on TV talent shows who insist that they’re doing ‘it’ (usually murdering a Snow Patrol song) for their nan who ‘passed away’, to the posh young woman who started up a podcast because she had ‘PTSD’ after her grandmother died. But that’s what grans do: they die on you. Don’t trust them!

Then there are what my husband dubbed ‘the tear-leaders’ of social media, atheists begging a Lord they don’t even believe in that certain stellar septuagenarians not be taken ‘too soon’. I must admit that once I got so exasperated that I started up my own tear-leading chorus on Facebook upon hearing that Pinky & Perky’s creator had expired: ’They may have lived like pigs – but more importantly, they gave us the freedom to be Us. Farewell, then, porky puppet pair – we shall not see your like again. There are two new sausage-shaped stars in Heaven now.’

I’ve always known that people I’m fond of will die, and not handily hang about forever in some sort of revenant state in order to spare my tears. Over the past two decades, I’ve dealt with the deaths of the people I loved most – my parents and my son and my in-laws – and I can honestly say it hasn’t left me ‘in bits’ or ‘broken’ or ‘destroyed’ or any of those cheap melodramatic words used to amp up the drama.

‘You never get over it’ is another – but some of us do, and our experience is just as valid as that of the eternally ‘heartbroken.’ Perhaps religious faith makes a difference? It’s funny that many atheists believe they’ve thrown off the inhibiting shackles of religion and embraced life joyously by doing so; the happiest people I know are Christians, while some of the worst miseries I know are non-believers, especially when it comes to the business of turning up one’s toes. The martyrs amongst us will come out with the brave little mantra that they aren’t scared of dying for themselves (my dad, who I worshipped, did this, the big show-off) but they don’t want to leave their loved ones behind, as they’ll be destroyed, in bits, broken and all that jazz. But I think it’s likely that quite a few of our loved ones will get a whole new lease of life when we die, especially if we’ve been suffering.

My mother did; she and my father were an extremely devoted couple, but after his long and painful death from mesothelioma – having sworn all the while she couldn’t go on without him – she seemed to be a girl again. I looked forward to going home to see her at weekends, as if reuniting with a best mate. OK, so she died in my arms of a heart attack a year after he kicked the bucket, but we had a lovely year of being young together one last time. Old people have experienced the most deaths of loved ones, yet they are the happiest they have been since children according to the ‘Happiness Curve’ theory. I have personal experience of this; I was a miserable little madam when young, and a difficult diva in middle age, but now I’m 64 it’s a rare morning when I don’t greet the day singing – and I can only think that this comes with knowing that one’s days are numbered, and being set on making the best of them.

Death and how we deal with it is down to our individual personalities; some people enjoy the idea of their dearly beloved weeping and wailing, while some, like David Bowie, refuse even a funeral as they want to ‘go without any fuss’ to quote the great man. I can see the attractions of both. But the stoic words of the widow MacGowan speak more to me than the over-emotional thrash of her late husband’s songs ever did.