“Don’t judge a book by its cover and very rarely trust first encounters.”
That’s what Kiefer Sutherland learned after meeting the late Shane MacGowan for the first time at a bar in the ’90s.
A 2019 anecdote shared by the “24” star is making its resurgence Thursday amid news that the Pogues frontman has died at age 65.
During an appearance on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show,” Sutherland, 56, told host Ryan Tubridy about the time he ran into Sinead O’Connor, Van Morrison, Ronnie Wood and MacGowan at a Dublin club.
“That’s something you’re never going to see,” he said of the star-studded table.
“I knew Ronnie so he invited me up to say hello and I introduced myself, and I couldn’t help but noticing that Sinead O’Connor was drinking milk and everybody else was not.”
Sutherland continued that he quickly made the “cardinal mistake” of bringing up politics only to find that he and MacGowan had conflicting opinions about the history of Scotland.
“And before you know it, the two of us were fighting,” he claimed. “We were rolling around on the floor and I remember Van Morrison laughing.”
“I won’t get into the fight, but it ended. And I got up and I said, ‘I’m embarrassed, I’m very sorry’ and I walked away,” he remembered.
The “Designated Survivor” star remembered MacGowan to be in a raggedy arm cast and not having a lot of teeth at the time, “so fighting just seemed unfair,” he admitted.
But “hours later,” while Sutherland was treating himself to a drink at the bar, MacGowan approached him again.
“I get a tap on my shoulder, and it’s Shane MacGowan. He says, ‘I need a place to stay.’”
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me? Three hours ago we were fighting on the floor.’”
But an unfazed MacGowan replied, ‘That was three hours ago, now I need a place to stay,’” Sutherland recalled, adding that MacGowan claimed his famous friends had already left the establishment.
“I was so impressed with his directness so I asked him to have a last drink, we walked back to my hotel, I got out a bunch of blankets and made a bed for him on the couch and he went to sleep and I went to sleep,” Sutherland marveled.
Sutherland said the “Fairytale of New York” singer was gone by the time he woke up, but had “perfectly folded” the used blankets and left him a handwritten note.
The next morning, the actor woke to discover MacGowan had gone — but left a beautiful note depicting how grateful he was to Sutherland.
“And it was the most beautiful letter I’d ever read, it was like poetry. It was just a thank you note, but it was so generous, and the things he had to say about me and our night and humanity. It was quite long.”
Sutherland concluded: “I’ve still got the letter to this day, and it changed my perspective, don’t judge a book by its cover and very rarely trust first encounters.”
The Post has contacted reps for Sutherland for comment.
The Pogues announced MacGowan’s death on Thursday but did not reveal his official cause of death.