Shane MacGowan [Masao Nakagami]

AND so it is that we lose Shane MacGowan just before a month of hearing his lovely Christmas tune, Fairytale of New York, in every shop and on every radio station.

It leaves us all in the drunk tank.

The Pogues singer has gone too soon at 65, and yet he still broke the predictions people had for him after his wildstyle ways and awful addictions.

While there have been mean things written about him – there always were – it’s a shame if people can’t see past the booze and the missing teeth.

He was robbed of his spark for life, a buzzing mind which had won him a scholarship at Westminster School as a teenager.

It’s often forgotten that he studied there and the promise he had shown after an early childhood in Tipperary.

Perhaps the school wouldn’t have him as a poster boy for the alumni magazine, especially as he had talked about how he mixed literature with his first narcotics.

“My father went to university and is very well read – so I learned to read really young,” he once explained.

“I was regarded as a gifted child and I won a scholarship to Westminster School by writing essays. At Westminster, I started doing pills and acid and going to the pub.”

And he went on: “I didn’t last there very long. I got nicked for smoking a joint and was kicked out. My mother was a bit upset, but my father wasn’t. He didn’t think that I was getting a lot out of school.”

Kirsty MacColl and Shane MacGowan in the video for Fairytale of New York

There are celebrities that are almost paraded for their excesses, and as a nation we buy into a communal joke. You wonder if they then feel – on top of the addiction – they have to play up to the storyline they have triggered for themselves.

People used to laugh at Oliver Reed singing while drunk on chat shows, or say George Best, “he likes a drink”. Gazza!, then there was Pete Doherty. Maybe you could include Amy Winehouse.

It was all treated as if we needed people to be pissed in front of us, so they would do something erratic and in doing so raise a cackle. With Shane MacGowan, people would marvel: How is he still alive?

How much booze you can tank is still a subject of both wonder and strange admiration in some quarters.

Harrington can tell you a story about the man though which is worth reflection.

He was in London one day and he picked up a copy of our sister newspaper, the Camden New Journal, which was running stories about children who had suffered horrific burns, scarred beyond any recognition.

Touched at the coverage, immedi­ately he made a sizeable donation to the charity supporting them.

There was no press release asking for coverage. No slick photograph, like those that seem to come with every “charitable” act among modern celebrities. He deserved to be on the front page though.
So, cheers Shane! A talented, good guy smashed by an addiction which could seize any of us in the wrong moment.

The Pogues’ Christmas song was already haunting because of the loss of Kirsty MacColl at only 41. It will be even more so this year. I could have been someone, well so could anyone.