Shane MacGowan’s friend on Pogues star’s funeral

A close friend of Shane MacGowan who is arranging The Pogues star’s funeral has said the singer will get a “lovely send off” on Friday.

Philly Ryan, a pub landlord and undertaker in the town of Nenagh, County Tipperary, where MacGowan’s funeral will take place on Friday afternoon, remembered the legendary frontman as a “very kind, decent, quiet, unassuming man”.

Thousands of mourners are set to pay tribute to MacGowan at a procession in Dublin this morning before his remains are driven by hearse to Nenagh for a requiem mass.

MacGowan’s mother, Thérèse, was from the local area, with the songsmith once living in the ancestral home.

Nick Cave and members of The Pogues are expected to be among those honouring the Fairytale of New York singer who died aged 65 last week following a long illness.

Mr Ryan, whose pub Philly Ryan’s is opposite his undertakers JJ Ryan – which is looking afterFriday’s funeral – recalled Christmases spent with the star.

“Over 20 of the last 30 Christmas Eves he came to my pub. When there was word he was coming down by a train, a taxi, by a lift, the excitement level would rise,” he told i.

“When he arrived on Christmas Eve you really got a Christmas feeling. It was a magical time to have Shane. It wasn’t like he was swamped or anything, he was just another punter in the pub.

“We wouldn’t ask him to sing. He didn’t like to steal the limelight. He was very quiet. He would sing if there was a band. He was a great man for his artists.

“He actually slept on the couch many nights and the cleaning lady would come in and she’d be waving the brush around and giving out like she was his mother.”

As friends, fans and journalists descended on Nenagh in the run-up to the funeral “you could feel the intensity rising”, with The Pogues music played on a loop through the streets.

And while the day was “tinged with sadness” Nenagh was “very proud of him”, he said, and would give MacGowan a “dignified” send off.

“The fact that not only did he not go on his journey in life and forget us, he embraced Nenagh,” he said.

“He loved walking up and down the streets and visiting a few pubs, he was welcome and he loved that, just being a normal Joe.

“The one thing the Irish do, we might not be top of a lot of things, but we do our funerals well. And he will get a lovely send off.

“We’re all sad for his loss, but we will be happy we had him at the same time.”

The procession in Dublin is due to start in the city centre at 10.30am, close to where the legendary frontman had lived with his wife Victoria Mary Clarke, and end at Sweny’s pharmacy, made famous by James Joyce’s Ulysseus.

After the cortege travels to Nenagh, a service will be held at St Mary of the Rosary Church with the service livestreamed.

MacGowan died of pneumonia on 30 November, a week after leaving hospital in Dublin, where he was being cared for after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis last year.

Born in Kent to Irish parents, he was heralded as one of the greatest songwriters of his era with the London-based Pogues, led by MacGowan, harnessing the energy of punk to the melodies of Irish music and gaining a reputation as an electrifying live act.

Over five albums with the band he became a voice of the Irish diaspora, with tracks like “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “the Old Main Drag” documenting the darker side of life among outcasts and the downtrodden.

But the wild abandon of songs like “Streams of Whiskey”, “Body of An American” and “Sally McLennanne” always gave The Pogues a life-affirming quality while tapping into the centuries-old seam of Irish traditional music that inspired MacGowan.

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The Pogues’ timeless Christmas classic, “Fairytale of New York”, penned by MacGowan and Finer and featuring Kirsty MacColl, hit number two in 1987 with bookies slashing the odds on the anthem topping the festive charts this time.

MacGowan, who had battled problems with drink and drugs, was kicked out of the Pogues in 1991, reemerging with a new band the Popes, in 1993, with whom he recorded two more studio albums.

The Pogues reformed in 2001 for a series of December gigs and continued playing live until 2014.

Following MacGowan’s death, tributes poured in from musicians including Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen, who hailed “the passion and deep intensity of his music and lyrics [which] are matched only by the best in the rock & roll canon.

“I don’t know about the rest of us, but they’ll be singing Shane’s songs 100 years from now.”

Nick Cave, a close friend of MacGowan’s, described him as “the greatest songwriter of his generation”.

MacGowan, who would have turned 66 on Christmas Day, is survived by his wife Victoria, his father Maurice and his sister, Siobhan.