I knew it was tragic before the words were out of my mouth. We were bantering – as you do – in a lame attempt to divert ourselves from the grim news in today’s i when we began reminiscing about Glastonbury experiences.

Books: I can't read while rehearsing and so all I'm managing at the moment is a page or two of Amanda Vickery's 'Behind Closed Doors' – a vivid and quirky domestic history of Georgian England. I was invited last October to go to the High Arctic with Cape Farewell. For months after I read nothing but books on climate change and the Arctic/Antarctic experience: Tim Flannery's 'The Weather Makers', 'With Scott to the Pole', a wonderful collection of Herbert Pontings photographs of the 1910-1913 expedition, and Stephen J Pyne's 'The Ice: a Journey to Antarctica'.

As a session guitarist who looks like the son of most of the acts he plays with (Peter Bruntnell, the Pretenders, the Pogues, the Pernice Brothers), it's hard not to notice Walbourne if you're lucky enough to have caught him live.

Off to the right of the stage, marked out in fluorescent tape, is a broad pathway leading into the wings of the Brixton Academy, with a couple of large taped arrows pointing stagewards. It's probably there to guide the roadies when they're humping gear in, but it's put to good use tonight when Shane MacGowan shuffles onstage uncertainly, as if an arrow might keep him on the straight and narrow. His bandmates have been greeted like homecoming heroes as they assemble, but that's nothing compared to the roar that rolls round the room when Shane staggers on. He's the drinking man's drinking man, someone blessed with the gift to wring beauty from what is clearly a tragic affliction.

Produced by John Leckie, recorded at Abbey Road. Whatever next?

Richard Strange's avant-garde Cabaret Futura altered the landscape of Eighties clubland. Elisa Bray welcomes its return

As before, Alabama 3 play fast and loose here with the imagery of religious belief, opening Revolver Soul with the humid, stifling menace of "Oh Christ" and romantic baptism of "She Blessed Me", before hitting the dark side of the street to hymn the "downtown queen" hooker "Jacqueline".

Most of the many stupid things I do on a regular basis – late payment of bills, buying over-priced sandwiches, missing flights – are the result of either laziness or a chronic lack of organisation. The stupidest of all, however, involves an uncharacteristic amount of effort and forward-planning. Apologies readers/Mum/everyone. I am a smoker.

While the word on the street shows signs of growing up, Old Skool never dies

Pogues singer Shane MacGowan has revealed he stays awake for a week at a time.

Every year, pop stars vie for the Christmas number-one spot. Why? Because a good seasonal hit never dies... Nick Duerden meets the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future

'We supported the Pogues because he thinks our music matches; we both make a fair old racket'

Neighbours of a planned housing development reacted angrily to a joke by developers that they would call the estate a rude name after objections to the proposals.

An exuberant, good-timey return by the Galway accordion virtuoso.