POGUES icon Shane MacGowan died of pneumonia after battling a devastating brain swelling condition, his devastated wife said.
Shane's wife Victoria Mary Clarke and his family were by his bedside when he passed away in the early hours of yesterday morning.
MacGowan, who would have turned 66 on Christmas Day, had been battling viral encephalitis and was released from hospital just last week.
Heartbroken Victoria Mary confirmed to the New York Times that Shane's cause of death was pneumonia.
Funeral details for the Fairytale of New York icon have not yet been confirmed.
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Shane's devastated family announced his death in a heartbreaking statement, confirming: "It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of Shane MacGowan.
"Shane died peacefully, on Thursday, 30th November, 2023, with his wife Victoria and family by his side.
"He is predeceased by his mother Therese and is survived by his beloved wife Victoria, his sister Siobhan and his father, Maurice, family and a large circle of friends.
"Further details will be announced shortly, the family ask for privacy at this very sad time. House Private, please."
Posting her own tribute, wife Victoria said: "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."
'YEARS OF LIFE AND LOVE'
She continued: "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.
"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.
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"You meant the world to me."
Shane's tragic death came just days after the couple had celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary.
Despite living as a couple since the mid-1980s, their decades-long engagement was known affectionately as one of the longest in rock.
And in a new tribute late last night, Victoria said: "I am going to miss him so much! His smile, his eyes, his laugh, his sense of humour and his voice, every little part of him."
The Rainy Night in Soho singer had been in intensive care for the past few months after his viral encephalitis diagnosis last year.
WIFE'S DEVOTION
Speaking to The Irish Sun recently, his wife Victoria told us how she had been in to see him every day.
She said: "I would rather be in there than not. So I go in every day. Sometimes I get a takeaway and we watch a film together.
"That's if I can stop him watching Father Ted."
Staff in St Vincent's had been amazed by the string of famous faces calling in to visit Shane.
They included Bono and The Edge from U2, Moya Brennan, Damien Dempsey, Daniel O'Donnell, Imelda May, Mundy and Bobby Gillespie.
Victoria said: "He probably has had more visitors in hospital than he would have at home."
She added: "Shane would never think of these people as celebrities.
"He would just see them as friends. You can get quite bored in hospital, so it's nice to have people calling in."
MUSIC WORLD MOURNS
Yesterday, tributes flooded in from all directions for the iconic singer.
The Pogues co-founder Peter "Spider" Stacy shared an image of his pal on stage, adding on X: "O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done …"
Aussie rocker Nick Cave wrote: "A true friend and the greatest songwriter of his generation. A very sad day."
In an effusive tribute, President Michael D Higgins described Shane as "one of music's greatest lyricists".
He said: "So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them.
"The genius of Shane's contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.
"His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways."
Johnny Cronin, of indie band Cronin, revealed how he had been at Shane's bedside only last Sunday, telling The Irish Sun: "We were with him for about two and a half hours. He was smiling and we were having the craic.
"I can't believe he is gone. He was a proud Irishman, a punk, a republican and a great fan of music and a loyal friend, he would stick with you."
Stuntman Johnny Knoxville added to the tributes, saying: "So sad to hear the great Shane MacGowan has passed.
"The Pogues got me through a lot of tough times and made the good times that much better.
"Shane was completely mad, a true poet and he will be sorely missed. They play Fairytale of New York a lot this time of year, and it will sting a little bit when they do.
"This pic is from 2004 when I got to see him play a small pub in London. We talked for a minute or two and I could not understand one word he said.
"But he prolly said the same about me too. That’s alright as I had that moment with him and we have his music and that’s damn well enough for me. RIP Shane MacGowan."
LOVABLE POGUE'S LEGACY
Born in Kent, England, in 1957, to Irish parents but raised in rural Tipperary, Shane was prodigiously bright, reading James Joyce and Dostoevsky by the age of 11.
As a young student, he bagged a literary prize and a scholarship to posh Westminster School in London. But nothing was more important to Shane than his Irishness.
Ripped from an idyllic childhood in rural Ireland and transplanted to the metropolis across the Irish Sea, he hung on to his Hibernian roots, later combining them with punk rock to reinvent Irish music for a worldwide audience.
Shane decided to channel his own ethnic music from Ireland to fuel his post punk band Pogue Mahone (an Anglicisation of the Irish phrase pòg mo thòin, meaning 'kiss my arse'), which later became The Pogues.
But after three albums, the massive success of Fairytale of New York, and constant touring, he revealed how he begged to leave the band he started as the non-stop time on the road eventually turned into a nightmare.
Looking back in 2020, Shane said: "One year we did 363 gigs. That's outrageous! When you play a gig every night of the week it ceases to be special.
"You find yourself going through the motions and you find that you are ripping yourself off and ripping the audience off.
"The Pogues had become what we had hated, a rock band.
"I never saw my girlfriend, I never saw my friends.
"I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a bus, or a hotel, or backstage waiting in a dressing room for the two hours that justified all that baloney."
