Shane MacGowan’s wife has posted an update on The Pogues singer’s health.
She had previously thanked well-wishers when posting a photo of the Fairytale Of New York singer in a hospital bed earlier this week.
MacGowan, 65, is believed to have been in intensive care for the past few months after he was diagnosed with viral encephalitis last year.
Image: Shane MacGowan in 1999
It is a serious condition where the brain becomes inflamed. It can be life-threatening and requires urgent treatment in hospital.
On Friday, his wife, Irish journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was “feeling much better”.
She also said she was “so grateful to everyone who is willing him to get home for Christmas”.
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Ms Clarke, 57, said in an Instagram post on Saturday that she was “facing terrifying fears of loss”.
She wrote: “Love is the most beautiful and powerful thing that we can experience as humans but love can also feel painful especially if you are afraid of losing a person or anything else that you love.”
“Sometimes when you love very deeply you will find yourself facing terrifying fears of loss that can feel so big and devastating that you don’t know how you can survive them and you can’t imagine life without this person that you love,” she added.
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Image: Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane MacGowan Pic: Mark Large/ANL/Shutterstock
The couple married in 2018 at Copenhagen City Hall in Denmark after more than 32 years together.
Ms Clarke previously revealed MacGowan’s bandmates Spider Stacy and Terry Woods had visited him recently.
The singer has faced several health issues in recent years.
Image: The Pogues in 1985: Shane MacGowan, Andrew Ranken, Jem Finer, Terry Woods, James Fearley, Philip Chevron, Spider Stacy and Cait O’Riordan. Pic: Everett/Shutterstock
In 2015, MacGowan broke his pelvis and has used a wheelchair since.
Six years later, he broke his knee in a fall before tearing ligaments in his left leg.
He never fully recovered from his injuries and confirmed in April that he “can’t walk anymore”.
MacGowan has also been open about his battle with addiction.
In 2015, he received a full set of teeth implants as his real teeth were destroyed by decades of drinking and drug use.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.