The fall from grace of Shane MacGowan reached an embarrassing nadir on Thursday night with a sorry performance. That a man directly responsible for so much anarchic fun in his time with The Pogues should fall so far is tragic.

He arrived on stage ridiculously late and his first action was to swear his head off, slurring his words as he did so. His second was to lift his T-shirt to show us his belly. And it was all downhill from there, as MacGowan and his band of six bashed through a set of unmemorable pub-standard rebel songs and electric reels. Admittedly, the small stage cramped the all-action style necessary for this music, but the performance was joyless and befuddled, dwarfed by the man's impressive past. The accordians, whistles and mandolins were all there, but the spirit was sadly missing. That the spark of such a rarified performer should be extinguished was always on the cards, but that makes it no less tragic to witness.