Shane MacGowan’s heartbreaking drink battle after being given booze at just 5

The late Pogues star Shane MacGowan suffered a very public battle with alcohol and drug addiction that took him to the darkest of places.

The Fairytale of New York singer has sadly died today at the age of 65, after a lifetime of success and fame in the music industry. Shane, who collaborated with some of the world’s most famous artists including Sinéad O’Connor, Ronnie Drew and Kirsty MacColl, suffered from various health issues throughout his years. The legendary performer was known for his struggles with drink and substance abuse during his heydey, and fellow singer and friend, Sinéad, once even reported him to the police for drug possession in a desperate bid to stop him using heroin.

Shane, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Kent on Christmas Day 1957 and lived in many parts of southeast England throughout his childhood. He was just five years old when his family gave him Guinness to help him fall asleep, and he once revealed: “I was smoking and drinking and gambling before I could talk.” He would go to the pub with his dad at a young age, and was kicked out of public school after six months for a drug-related incident.

As a teen, he became famous for his partying lifestyle as he ventured into the punk music scene and turned to alcohol and LSD to fuel his creativity as a songwriter. Shane admitted he took his first acid ‘trip’ at 14 and often interviewed while drunk. At just 17 years old, he checked himself into rehab for the first time. He said in the early 2000s: “I was given six weeks to live, about 25 years ago!”

In an interview with The Guardian in 2004, bandmate Terry Woods recalled a time Shane was in such a mess, staff thought he’d been in a car crash. “There were two vans sent to pick us up and Shane was in such a state he had the second van all to himself. The Japanese are really polite and this guy ran around to open the door and Shane was so pissed he just fell out in the street,” he said, adding: “He was very bloody and knocked himself out. When we took him back to the hotel they thought he’d been in a car accident.”

His wild ways eventually led to the loss of his teeth, which fans noticed were disappearing in his hit 1987 Fairytale of New York music video. By 2008, Shane had none of his original gnashers left and he went on to have 28 new dentures fitted with a gold tooth to replace them. The procedure was even filmed for a documentary, Shane MacGowan: A Wreck Reborn.

His wife Victoria later put his alcohol addiction down to spending much of his childhood and youth surrounded by drink, “singing in bars and clubs”. She said his “whole career revolved around it”. But after meeting Victoria and falling in love, Shane started drinking less and she noticed a big change in him. In 2021, she told the New York Times it was a “couple of years” since she had “seen him drunk” and instead, he used cannabis.

Victoria announced the sad news of his death on social media today, writing a heartfelt statement. “I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane, who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams, and the love of my life, and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel, and the sun and the moon, and the start and end of everything that I hold dear, has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese,” she wrote.

“I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures. There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world.” Victoria concluded: “Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music. You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much You meant the world to me.”

Shane made a name for himself at London Sex Pistols gigs and the early Punk haunts like the Roxy, the 100 club and Marquee, before forming the early line-up of the Pogues then known as Pogue Mahone – which is the anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic póg mo thóin, meaning ‘kiss my a**e’ – in the 80s. Between 1982 and 1991, MacGowan and The Pogues enjoyed incredible success with several album releases and co-wrote Fairytale of New York, which he performed with Kirsty MacColl. Although the song never took the Christmas number 1 spot, it has continued to be a staple festive song for many years and remains a much-loved festive tune to this day.

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