AG百家乐在线官网

By Stephen Murphy, Ireland correspondent in Tipperary

The crowd of mourners had thinned over the course of the lengthy service, but who could blame them? The wind howled and blew gusts of rain through their ranks, on a bleak wintry day in Nenagh.

But then a moment of utter warmth flowed from inside the St Mary of the Rosary church and enveloped those outside. The strains of the song that will forever shape Shane MacGowan's legacy, Fairytale of New York, drifted out, and the crowd sparked into life, bellowing the lyrics into the dark AG百家乐在线官网, lifting their phones above their heads.

The irony 鈥� by the time of his death MacGowan was truly fed up of the song 鈥� was irrelevant. Inside the church, Shane's widow Victoria spun around in front of the altar, as a joyous jig broke out among the mourners. They were dancing in the aisles.

Throughout the day, Fairytale had been piped over the tow's PA system, the snarling festive duet serenading shoppers, along with the rest of the Pogues' back catalogue. Here in Nenagh, his childhood home, he was just known as Shane.

"I think I've died and gone to heaven," said Father Pat Gilbert, after the remaining Pogues members performed in his church, having already informed the congregation of his fanhood.

Earlier in the day, we had seen more scenes of celebration on the streets of Dublin, Shane's adopted home, as his cortege wound its way through the streets, with fans lifting pints of Guinness and bursting into song. Some threw flowers.

Shane MacGowan, according to his widow, hated going to funerals, and tried to avoid them. This was no funeral in the normal sense of the word. It was a long, raucous and slightly chaotic celebration of a hugely chaotic and much-loved icon of modern Ireland.

The service closes with thanks from Father Pat Gilbert, and the final prayers.

Roses are laid on top of Shane MacGowan's coffin before it is carried out of the church.

The mass will be followed by a private ceremony.

Some of MacGowan's former Pogues bandmates - Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Spider Stacy and James Fearnley - are playing the last song of the funeral mass.

They are performing the Scottish traditional song The Parting Glass.

Victoria May Clarke says she and Shane MacGowan were "destined to be together" and there was a "magnet" pulling them together.

She said she felt like she'd "won the lottery" when he first told her he loved her.

"I felt like there was nothing more that my life needed in order to be complete than to be with him, and I'm very grateful."

She said they would laugh and smile at each other "50 times a day".

"I have yet to meet a couple who have that gift... I just haven't met anyone else who has that. So it would be greedy, really, to want more than we got. We got so much."

Ms May Clarke says though she is "devastated" by MacGowan's death she feels her heart has "got bigger".

She ends her eulogy by asking for compassion to those suffering from an alcohol or drug addiction.

Shane MacGowan's wife says he was "intensely religious" and got a "physical visceral buzz out of the Holy Communion".

"He just loved it," she says. "He prayed every day. He was very grateful to be alive. He's grateful for the gift of life. Every morning when he woke up, he gave thanks and prayed to God for giving him another day."

She jokes that he would pray for people on television and in film who were acting dead. "He'd still be praying and covering all bases just in case," she says.

"His devotion was very beautiful, but it was also very radical."

Shane MacGowan's widow Victoria May Clarke is next to deliver a eulogy, which she said she wrote "at 5am this morning".

Everybody who knew her husband knew "how much he hated funerals" she says, and there were "very few that he did go to". MacGowan believed he was never going to die, she adds.

"He always assured me that he would live to be at least 80," she says, and described his death as "a huge shock".

Talking about her late husband's life, she says MacGowan was someone who "wasn't really that interested in living a normal life".

"He didn't want a 9-5 job or a mortgage or any of that stuff," she tells the church.

Ms Mary Clarke says MacGowan "really did live so close to the edge that he seemed like he was going to fall off many times", but says his creativity "may not have been possible without the use of all these substances".

When her husband would write or draw it would "just come tumbling out", she says.

"His mind was capable of going to these places that normal minds don't go to."

Shane MacGowan's sister is emotional as she nears the end of her eulogy.

"So Shane, you did what you dreamed," she says. "You did what you said were going to do in those long ago days in Tipperary, and you did it with such heart and fire - a fire that is not dimmed by death."

Ms MacGowan delivers words from herself and her father, as she says: "We are so proud of you, so very proud my darling."

She is tearful as she speaks the last line: "I told you I'd always love you. I always did. And I always will."

Siobhan MacGowan now recalls her family's move to London when Shane was 13, which is where his "love and obsession with music came to the fore".

"He would sit at his table and earnestly study his music magazines," she says.

The development of the punk genre in the 1970s was a "milestone in his life", says Ms MacGowan, as she describes the road to The Pogues' formation the following decade.

The church falls silent as Shane MacGowan's sister, Siobhan MacGowan, walks on stage to deliver the first eulogy.

She says her brother "would have enjoyed" the rendition of Fairytale of New York which came before her speech.

"Thank you," she says.

"It's lovely and very fitting to see you gathered in this church as this is where mother attended mass every Sunday and where Shane would accompany her when he was home," she says, and thanks those who had helped to organise her brother's funeral.

Ms MacGowan says though Shane spent the last six months of his life in hospital, "there was hardly a dull moment" and he "rarely spent a moment alone".

She recalls memories of their life growing up, including evenings "eating Rice Krispie cakes and intently watching Doctor Who".

MacGowan's veins "ran with Irish blood" and it was in Tipperary - where his funeral is taking place - that he "reunited with the land he loved", says his sister.

There were laughs from the audience as she told a story of how Shane as a child would look for "freshly laid cow pats" in the fields and "force her face into them" while picking up the harder ones to throw at her.