Inside the life of Shane MacGowan: The Pogues rocker who was born in Tunbridge Wells and went to prep school in Westminster, but had his first Guiness at four, and got drunk on whiskey at eight, leaving all who loved him asking – how did he make it to 65!

Farewell to the Spirit Of Christmas Plastered. Shane MacGowan, the ravaged, foul-mouthed, broken-toothed rock star who co-wrote the best-loved festive karaoke song of all time, has died aged 65 — decades later than he or anyone else expected.

The former singer with punk-folk band The Pogues defied the doctors so often that he achieved a kind of immortal status. A few days ago, his devoted wife Victoria, who became his lover at 16 and stayed loyally at his side ever after, released photographs of him in a hospital bed. He was skeletal, paper-skinned but still flashing his reprehensible grin.

His beloved festive hit with Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale Of New York, will be bellowed out at pub parties across the land this year with more gusto and raw emotion than any traditional carol. No one could possibly render Silent Night or The First Noel with the same ferocious glee.

The lyrics are infamous: ‘You’re a bum, You’re a punk, You’re an old slut on junk, Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed. You scumbag, You maggot, You cheap, lousy faggot, Happy Christmas your a*se, I pray God it’s our last.’

The single was the result of a drunken argument with Elvis Costello, who produced The Pogues’ breakthrough second album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash. Goading them in the bar at Dublin’s Blooms Hotel, Costello bet the band they couldn’t write a Christmas song without turning into a schmaltzy pop variety act, punk versions of Val Doonican.

Farewell to the Spirit Of Christmas Plastered. Shane MacGowan (centre), the ravaged, foul-mouthed, broken-toothed rock star who co-wrote the best-loved festive karaoke song of all time, has died aged 65 — decades later than he or anyone else expected

A few days ago, his devoted wife Victoria (pictured together), who became his lover at 16 and stayed loyally at his side ever after, released photographs of him in a hospital bed

Winning the bet took two years but, in December 1987, MacGowan and his sister, Siobhan, were huddled round a transistor radio at the farmhouse in Tipperary, listening avidly to Radio 1’s chart show. Fairytale Of New York was No.2 in the UK, No.1 in Ireland.

In later life, he sometimes disowned it, claiming not to like Christmas. ‘I can’t stand all that sort of stuff. It’s gross.’ He said the song left him ‘bored’, but became defensive when an online student magazine called The Tab blasted it in 2019 as ‘homophobic’ because it included the insult ‘faggot’ — used as a derogatory word for a gay man.

The word, sung by MacColl, was ‘used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak. She is not supposed to be a nice person.

‘She is a woman of a certain generation and she is down on her luck and desperate,’ he said.

‘Not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable. Some have to be evil or nasty to tell the story effectively.’

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Though born on December 25, MacGowan, whose final years were spent in a wheelchair, afflicted by encephalitis that caused swelling of the brain, was an unlikely patron saint of Yuletide.

A former heroin addict whose drink and drug binges were notorious even amid the 1980s music scene, he survived numerous drunken fights and a high-speed fall from a car on a motorway (something, improbably, that he shared with another star of his era, George Michael).

Though the reputation of The Pogues was built on chaotic performances and crowd punch-ups, the band found his hell-raising excesses impossible and sacked him as lead singer in 1991.

His response was to form The Popes, in effect a tribute band to himself. Recording sessions for the first album were so demented and dissolute that each day’s tapes were sent to another studio to be reworked. MacGowan never noticed the difference.

For 30 years, he lived on the fumes of past glories and the royalties from Fairytale. Despite the shambling wreckage that was his life, he retained an unmistakable voice with a drawling delivery that was much loved.

Bob Dylan invited him to be the opening act for a show in New York in 1988. MacGowan failed to show up at the airport and missed his flight. His wife, the music journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, found him at a friend’s house, with blood streaming down his face.

After swallowing dozens of LSD tabs, and tripping to Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, he had become convinced it was his cosmic duty to devour the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits — literally, by chewing a vinyl album.

‘Shane took a lot of drugs,’ Victoria remarked, ‘and the effects became more unpredictable and more disturbing. That was the problem, not the gin and tonic.’

His capacity for self-destructive binges, coupled with an Irish poet’s gift for the English language and a genuine appreciation for beautiful music, earned him lifelong admirers. He recorded with Nick Cave, performed on the BBC’s Children In Need single Perfect Day with Lou Reed and David Bowie, and sang in French on a Serge Gainsbourg tribute album.

Though the reputation of The Pogues was built on chaotic performances and crowd punch-ups, the band found his hell-raising excesses impossible and sacked him as lead singer in 1991

A former heroin addict whose drink and drug binges were notorious even amid the 1980s music scene, he survived numerous drunken fights and a high-speed fall from a car on a motorway (something, improbably, that he shared with another star of his era, George Michael)

For his 60th birthday celebrations at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in January 2018, he was joined by Cave, U2 singer Bono, Cerys Matthews of Catatonia, Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and Carl Barat of the Libertines — rock aristocrats spanning 30 years of stardom.

Pogues members reunited as his backing band and Johnny Depp played rhythm guitar.

A man of endless contradictions, MacGowan started life not in Ireland but its spiritual opposite: Royal Tunbridge Wells.

His mother, Therese, went into labour unexpectedly when she and husband Maurice were visiting family in Kent, in 1957. Shane was their first child, born in Pembury maternity hospital.

Before the family returned to their crowded farmhouse in Tipperary, baby Shane spent his first few weeks sleeping in a drawer in his aunt’s bedroom.

Therese loved singing and passed on her passion for music to her son. Maurice had a Dubliner’s love of literature. Shane himself credited neither of them: his genius, he said began with a bout of measles, aged four: ‘The spots never came out, they went to my head and I went completely mad for a month. That’s when I started making up stories and poems and songs.’

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A dozen or more relatives shared the house, including Shane’s hero, Uncle John: ‘He was a Zen master in the art of cursing. The rest of the time, he remained completely and absolutely silent. He grunted, rather than saying yes or no.’

It was a trick his nephew adopted for interviews with rock journalists. Silence alternated with unprintable outbursts, which help to explain why MacGowan was never a regular on TV chat shows.

His parents were often absent, working in England while he was growing up, and his aunts and uncles had a rackety attitude to child-rearing. He had his first Guinness when he was just four years old. Aged eight, he got drunk on whiskey for the first time. Weaving across the farmyard, he was convinced he could understand what the geese were saying.

He’d boast of IRA connections and claim the farm was a safe house for Republican militia men at the start of The Troubles in the 1960s.

Ireland’s history hung over him in other ways. Once, scrabbling through the sand dunes on a trip to the seaside at Mayo, he and his friends uncovered human bones — the remains of famine victims from the 19th century.

The Kent connection also refused to go away. Defying convention, his parents declined to send him to the Christian Brothers school in Tipperary, instead enrolling him in an English prep school, Holmewood House in Langton Green.

He won a literary competition in a national newspaper, then a scholarship to Westminster, one of the most prestigious public schools. But his academic career proved brief. As a London schoolboy in 1971, he discovered marijuana, grew his hair long like a hippie and got hooked on prescription tranquilisers.

For 30 years, he lived on the fumes of past glories and the royalties from Fairytale. Despite the shambling wreckage that was his life, he retained an unmistakable voice with a drawling delivery that was much loved

His parents were often absent, working in England while he was growing up, and his aunts and uncles had a rackety attitude to child-rearing. He had his first Guinness when he was just four years old. Aged eight, he got drunk on whiskey for the first time. Weaving across the farmyard, he was convinced he could understand what the geese were saying

The boys were encouraged to hold a mock General Election. Shane was appointed to the Cabinet, as Minister for Torture. When he was expelled a year later, the official explanation was that he’d been caught smoking. What he was smoking wasn’t specified.

After a brief spell at art college, he suffered a drug-induced breakdown and spent six months in a mental hospital, being weaned off Valium. When he emerged, he hacked off his hair and dyed the spiky remnants white.

His name, he announced, was now Shane O’Hooligan.

By 1976, he was a regular at the Roxy, Marquee and 100 Club — all the early punk venues. To cash in, he launched a fanzine called Bondage. It ran for one issue, which was all he needed to crowbar his way into the in-crowd.

At an early Clash gig, he was photographed at the edge of the stage snogging his girlfriend, bass player Jane Crockford of the all-girl band The Mo-dettes. When they were pulled apart, she’d bitten his earlobe and his face was smeared with blood. The photo ran in the New Musical Express, captioned: ‘These people are cannibals!’

READ MORE: The man who epitomised punk rock: The Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan was a belligerent former drug addict with a love of cursing and raising hell…but that didn’t stop him becoming the unlikely patron saint of Christmas

With his next girlfriend, he launched his own band, The Nipple Erectors. Known as The Nips, they released four singles but failed to dent the charts — though one of their drummers, Jon Moss, went on to form Culture Club.

MacGowan’s next band, Pogue Mahone, appeared to be destined for equal obscurity… perhaps because their unpronounceable name translated in Gaelic to ‘kiss my backside’.

But their sweaty, stomping blend of Irish folk music and rockabilly started to gain a following on London’s pub circuit, and after a 1984 tour supporting The Clash they landed a record deal… as The Pogues.

‘When I saw The Pogues for the first time, I was shocked,’ Victoria said. ‘It was crazy. Everyone was throwing chairs and throwing drinks. It was dangerous, for the band as well as the audience.’

Costello was hired to bring some discipline to the studio. Though he and most of the band grew to loathe each other, the sessions yielded their first hit single — a dirge called Dirty Old Town. It was originally written in 1949 by folk singer Ewan MacColl — father of late Fairytale singer Kirsty.

Sell-out tours followed, but MacGowan found life on the road gruelling. Sustaining himself with alcohol and drugs, he became increasingly paranoid.

Though he’d been in a long-term relationship with Victoria since she was 16, he stumbled into hotel beds with anyone willing to sleep with him. ‘I never bothered with the ones you had to talk to,’ he said. ‘Whoever had the energy to capture me and drag me back to the hotel got the lollipop.’

He began to believe his lyrics were dictated to him by ghosts. ‘I actually see people dictating to me, behind me, through… they call it the third eye. I’ve seen ghosts behind me in period costume on a couple of occasions.’

Though he’d been in a long-term relationship with Victoria since she was 16, he stumbled into hotel beds with anyone willing to sleep with him. ‘I never bothered with the ones you had to talk to,’ he said. ‘Whoever had the energy to capture me and drag me back to the hotel got the lollipop’

After a performance in 2000 with the late singer Sinead O’Connor, she reported him to the police for his heroin habit.

It probably saved his life. He and Victoria both went into rehab: he for drug addiction, she to be treated for depression.

Famous for his rotten teeth, in 2015 Shane underwent extensive dental surgery to replace them with implants. Victoria chose the whitest available, after seeing a photo of actor Michael Fassbender.

MacGowan, remembering how he had once got drunk with a bunch of fishermen in Greece with glittering smiles, insisted on having one solid gold tooth.

This year he and Victoria celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary, though they’d been together, with periodic break-ups, for 41 years. ‘I’ve been lucky,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been beaten up a lot, I’ve had a lot of illnesses and accidents, I’ve been run over three times.’

Victoria became his carer as a series of medical problems saw him hospitalised. MacGowan used a wheelchair from 2016, when he fell and broke his pelvis while dancing. Another fall, on his Zimmer frame, left him with a broken right knee and he subsequently tore ligaments in his other knee.

Last year, he published a book of his paintings and drawings in a limited edition, called The Eternal Buzz And The Crock Of Gold: 1,000 copies at £1,000 each.

It was a typical flash of defiance, one of the moments of artistic flair that somehow survived all his drink and drug abuse — like a gold tooth in a mouthful of ruins.

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