Irish singer Shane MacGowan dies at 65

Shane MacGowan, the London-Irish singer with The Pogues celebrated as one of Ireland's greatest song writers, has died, his wife said on Thursday. MacGowan, who transformed Irish traditional music with The Pogues and penned some of the most haunting ballads of the 1980s' before sinking into alcohol and drug addiction, died after a prolonged period of ill health. But he became just as well known for his slurred speech, missing teeth and on-stage meltdowns.

Shane MacGowan, the London-Irish singer with The Pogues celebrated as one of Ireland's greatest song writers, has died, his wife said on Thursday.

MacGowan, who transformed Irish traditional music with The Pogues and penned some of the most haunting ballads of the 1980s' before sinking into alcohol and drug addiction, died after a prolonged period of ill health. "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 start and end of everything that I hold dear, has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese," his wife Victoria Mary Clarke wrote on Instagram.

"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." MacGowan achieved mainstream success with his bittersweet, expletive-strewn 1987 Christmas anthem "Fairytale of New York. But he became just as well known for his slurred speech, missing teeth and on-stage meltdowns.