A former regional journalist has written an authorised biography of a famous singer who “hates being interviewed” after three years of work.

Richard Balls, who used to work for the Eastern Daily Press, has penned the book about The Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan.

Richard underwent “hours” of conversation with the singer for ‘Furious Devotion: The Authorised Story of Shane MacGowan’.

He has now spoken to his old newspaper about how the book came to life, having first met Mr MacGowan while writing a different book on the history of Stiff Records.

Richard, a fan of The Pogues since 1984, told the EDP: “He’s actually just terrific company.

“I thought he’d be quite intimidating somehow. Sometimes when someone has the reputation that they do in the tabloid papers, they’re always writing about their antics and stuff, you’re not sure what they’re going to be like.

“He’s so well-read and frighteningly intelligent, but he talks quite quietly. Chuckles away to himself about things that he remembers from the past.”

Richard went on to explain how he had to earn the Irish singer’s trust.

He added: “Somebody once likened doing an interview with Shane as like doing a wildlife documentary. You have to wait for hours and hours and hours and hours and then eventually you might get a few quotes or something.

“The first time I went [to Ireland], I remember thinking I won’t even try and interview him, because I just sensed that it was better to get him to trust me and to have me around.

“After all, he was kind enough to have me in his home and to host me like that, so in respect to that I thought let’s take this very, very slow. And the next time I went over I started recording things.

“So I ended up in a privileged position, one that I hopefully never took for granted, which was basically sitting there beside him in his own house for hours or days on end just chatting and having a drink.

“A lot of it was probably got in the early hours of the morning, or maybe in the afternoon if he was up for it. But I never pushed him because he hates being interviewed, loathes it, hates talking about his work, so I would probably ask him more about things that weren’t his work.

“He seems much happier to talk about his childhood, the bands he was into when he was younger or other things in his life, his teachers, or his family, rather than actually talking about The Pogues.”