Post by Spencer on Nov 18, 2023 16:58:37 GMT
Shocking picture of Shane 3 days ago
Shane MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke has shared some heartfelt words for fans of the Pogues star as he continues receiving hospital care.
The singer behind the Christmas anthem “Fairytale of New York” was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, an uncommon and potentially life-threatening condition that causes the brain to swell, last December.
He has repeatedly been admitted to the hospital, with Clarke providing occasional updates. Clarke, a journalist, has been in a relationship with MacGowan, 65, for decades. They married in 2018.
In 2016 he fell and broke his pelvis while dancing and has had to use a wheelchair or Zimmer frame ever since. Another fall left him with a broken right knee and torn ligaments around his left knee. The series of falls has left his wife as his carer and the singer previously said he does not expect to walk again.
Earlier in his life, the lead singer overcame a heroin addiction, a high-speed fall from a car and numerous drunken fights.
The singer’s struggle with alcoholism has been long documented and he has performed while significantly inebriated on several occasions. In his 2001 book co-written with Clarke, A Drink with Shane MacGowan, he claimed that he began drinking at age five when his family gave him Guinness to sleep.
Though MacGowan has been making solo music since his start in the music industry in the late 1970s, he is best known to many for being the lead singer of The Pogues. However, MacGowan was fired from the band at its peak of popularity in 1991, due to his unreliability. The singer had previously missed the first dates of The Pogues’s 1988 American tour, impacting their ability to promote their album Hell’s Ditch.
The last straw for MacGowan in the band came after a “chaotic” performance at the Womad Festival in Japan in 1991. The Pogues disbanded in 1996, before returning with MacGowan back in tow, in 2001.
Shane in better days