While friends fear that Shane MacGowan may be a danger to himself, Michael Sheridan reports on the deaths of three others who moved in his circle and, below, asks the singer for his comments on the fatalities.

Twenty-five year old Robbie O'Neill - eldest son of former Pogues publicist Terry - was, according to his friends, an affable, good-humoured and popular young man. He was educated in Taney School in the Dublin suburb of Dundrum and later at Newpark Comprehensive in Blackrock.

Like many of his generation, he enjoyed the use of soft drugs and later experimented with ecstasy. In late 1993 he followed the music trail to London, studied sound engineering at the Mean Fiddler and pursued a career as a monitor engineer for leading musical acts at various venues of Vince Power's empire. Like many of those immersed in the whirlwind of youth, he tired of the routine and gave up his job to contemplate new pastures. This effectively meant unemployment, and to fill in his time he began writing songs and poems.

Through his father he encountered many stars, and according to those who knew him he was underwhelmed by the company of those whom most would fawn over. It was inevitable that he would end up in the company of the Pogues entourage - later the Popes - and lead singer Shane McGowan. Early in 1999 Robbie was in a drifting mode; he moved out of his father's house and in with McGowan at 82 Savernake Road, Gospel Oak, in North London.

Robbie dabbled in drugs but told close friends that he hated heroin for what it did to people, either killing them or turning them into monsters.

On the evening of May 17, 1999, he was in the singer's house in North London. At some indeterminate time, Robbie took a line of heroin which he probably thought was cocaine. Within 15 minutes he was in a coma, and in about half an hour he was dead.

The pathologist's report at the inquest into his death held the following October would reveal that he died of opiate poisoning; he had ingested four times the fatal dose of heroin. Also present in his bloodstream was what was described as a "recreational" amount of cocaine. But, significantly - to counteract the view that this was just another junkie death - the postmortem report revealed was one of a healthy fit young man, and the fact that there was no heroin present in the urine was positive proof that Robbie O'Neill was not an habitual heroin user. Had he been using heroin up to four days before the overdose, the drug would have registered in the urine sample.

This fact underlined the tragedy, because clearly Robbie O'Neill had no idea of the implications of taking the amount that he did.

The coroner's proceedings conceded that because rigor mortice had set in, it was reasonable to conclude that O'Neill had been dead for some hours before the ambulance was called and arrived at the house at 1.15am. This concession was made despite the fact that the official time of death was recorded at 2.24am on May 18 when the forensic medical examiner arrived.

A spokesman for the St Pancras coroner's court said it was routine to give time of death as the time when the forensic examiner arrived on the scene.

Shane McGowan's account of the tragic event is contained in the relevant extract from his witness statement to the coroner's inquest:

"On Monday May 17 between midnight and 2am Robbie came home and he was happy and he was messing about. We chatted and watched a video, The Wild Bunch. I went to bed because I was tired. Robbie was still awake. I slept for 22 hours as I was awake two days [previously] wrestling and trying to do work. Then Robbie seemed happy enough, mucking about. On Tuesday May 18 at around 1am I woke up and found Robbie in the living room. I thought he was asleep and I tried to wake him up but he did not respond. I could not see him breathing and noted that he felt cold. I tried to move him but he was stiff."

McGowan went on to state that he then rang an ambulance. During the 22 hour period in which he said he was sleeping, McGowan received at least one phone all. A very close friend of Robbie O'Neill says he rang the house at 10.48pm on Monday and spoke to the singer.

The friend, Frank McGovern from Blackrock, Co Dublin, is a student of information technology and had known Robbie O'Neill since his schooldays in Newpark. He told the Sunday Independent that in the weeks up to his best friend's death they had been recording some of Robbie's songs.

"He was very relaxed and happy. On the night of his death I rang Shane McGowan's place to make contact, because I had not seen him since before the weekend. The time was about 10.50pm. When I asked him where Robbie was he replied, 'Robbie? No. No he's not here, he's not here. I saw him yesterday.' I asked him to leave a message that I had called, and he said quickly, 'Yeah, yeah'."

McGowan did not turn up at the inquest, arousing comment from the coroner Dr Stephen Chan, who criticised him for not having the courtesy to turn up. The coroner told O'Neill's father, "I share your sentiment that it is a matter of deep regret that he [McGowan] had not the courtesy, and I understand too that he called himself a friend of yours, so there you are, you know what kind of friends you have."

In the minds of friends and family of the deceased there are many unanswered questions which could have been addressed had the singer turned up at the inquest. In fact he also failed to turn up at the cremation and was late for a subsequent memorial service in Dublin.

A source important in the Pogues history and hierarchy said: "What makes me angry is that the culture was established and spread to other people. No one forced them to take the drug, but the fact is that in that period of time three of my best friends working for the band in one capacity or another are now dead. That makes me very bitter and sad, but Shane doesn't seem to have taken on board the fact that he could be next."

They both rebut McGowan's assertion, again on The Late Late Show, that Sinéad O'Connor reported him to the police for publicity purposes. Sinéad O'Connor confirmed that she had confronted McGowan at his flat, where he snorted heroin in front of her.

"I reported him to the police for his own good. I never wanted him put into prison, because drugs are freely available there, but ordered into a rehabilitation programme."

Bryan Ging - known as "Ginger" to his schoolmates and later to his friends - came from a middle class background in South Co Dublin and was educated in St Mary's college.

He was an aimless, feckless type of a guy, known to everyone in Dublin not for his achievements but for his genial nature and his looks - he closely resembled Rod Steward - which became his trademark and entry into the musical circles in Dublin. He became a hanger-on in the music scene, always on the lookout for a free gig, free drink, dope and best of all these, a night out with the band.

He was well known, and liked, it has to be said, around old Dublin clubs of the Seventies, and he specialised in inculcating himself upon the entourage of whatever band was playing. His skill in this regard was recognised by both club and band managements, and Ginger was accepted as part of the London music map as well - his persistence was admired and his presence considered colourful. Unlike other professional music liggers, who are often tolerated but despised by the business, nobody had a bad word to say about him.

When the Pogues were the biggest Irish act in London, it was inevitable that Bryan Ging would find his way into the entourage of a band with a reputation equal to - if not better than - that of the early Rolling Stones.

The Pogues' minders took to ginger and didn't object to him hanging out or getting free tickets, or an invitation to the savage bashes that followed gigs.

He was no innocent when it came to drink and drugs, but none of his close friends in either Dublin or London ever considered him an addict or a smackhead. His geniality and enthusiasm were the opposite of the introverted and sometimes nasty nature of the heavy "heads". but he was clearly intoxicated by hanging out with the Pogues, later the Popes and particularly Shane McGowan.

towards the end of May 1995 Bryan Ging was ringing friends in London, telling them about hanging out with the Popes and how exciting their company was, and to one friend whom he phoned, Ging seemed in really good form, with no indication of heavy drug-taking.

But in or around May 26 Ginger was found in a state of collapse in north London a passer-by rang an ambulance and he was brought to hospital. He was discharged fairly quickly and explained to friends that he had been mugged. No one had any reason or evidence to dispute this explanation.

Events on July 3 threw a different light on the incident. A phone call to the emergency services brought an ambulance assigned to Whittington Hospital to Blackstock Road in north London where a man was found in a collapsed state in a flat.

The man was dead on admission to the hospital. the postmortem revealed that he had died from a mixture of alcohol and opiates. There was scant information about his identity, so his body was removed to the mortuary and his case taken over by the Clapham police, because a scrap of information revealed that he resided in their district.

Police in north London called several times to the flat in which the body was found, and left notes, but the occupants never answered the door and never replied to the notes.

For the next four days the police could not identify the body. In Dublin, music broadcaster Dave Fanning heard a rumour about the death. He immediately rang a close friend, who rang another. he in turn passed on the message to Anne Sheridan, a friend of Bryan Ging, who lived near him in Clapham. she was shocked, because nobody was privy to this information, least of all the dead man's family.

Horrified at the news, Anne Sheridan went around to Ging's flat - which was empty, with the door open - and then to the local police station. An officer informed her that there was a body in the morgue. She agreed to identify it the next day, but in the meantime the police came up trumps and, from a supplied photograph, identified the body as that of Bryan Ging - a native of Dublin, with an address in Clapham. His body was returned to Ireland and he was buried in Dublin later in July 1995.

Anne Sheridan went back to the Clapham police, eho, from a recording of the emergency call, had traced the phone number to a house in Blackstock Road occupied by Shane McGowan. she rang the number and asked for Shane McGowan, and was told that he lived there but was away.

Shane McGowan recalls the incident: "I remember we called an ambulance to the house in Blackstock Road. They came in and carried him out in a stretcher. I heard a few hours later that he died, 'cause we rang the hospital."

The inquest into the death of Bryan Ging was held on September 25, 1995, at St Pancras coroner's court; the coroner was the same Dr Stephen Chan who would later conduct the inquest on Robbie O'Neill. Dr Chan made the same criticism of the so-called friends of Bryan Ging as he would of McGowan for not turning up at the O'Neill inquest.

According to a report of that inquest, and ambulance was called to an address at Blackstock Road in north London where Shane McGowan lived at the time. The ambulance crew included Elaine Nicolaides, who said, "We were called to the address where a man had collapsed. There were two men in the flat, who pointed at the deceased against a chest of drawers. There was no sign of life and the friends seemed to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or both." The cause of death was given as acute alcohol poisoning and morphine overdose.

The coroner, concerned about the "friends" not attending the hearing, recalled WPC Joanne Hoskins to the witness box. She said: "I visited the address [where the deceased was found] many times and each time I attended nobody answered. I left numerous notes for someone to contact me or the coroner's court, but nobody did."

The coroner ruled death by misadventure, but noted, "It was a matter of deep regret that they [friends] did not come forward."

This was the second death in the space of four months in Shane McGowan's orbit.

In March 1995, the Popes were playing a gig in the Élysées Montmartre in Paris. On the night of March 6 the band and a number of the crew went back to the Regynes Hotel in the district. In the early hours of the following morning, the promoter Alan Lahana received a call from the hotel informing him that one of the crew was dead in one of the hotel bedrooms. Lahana went straight to the hotel and called the police. When a member of the gendarmes examined the scene, it was clear to him that the body had been moved - perhaps in an effort to lift it onto the bed.

The promoter identified the body as that of Dave Jordan, a monitor engineer with the Popes, who had an association previously with the Pogues going back to the mid-Eighties. He was a gentle, quiet, shy man from the English Lake District who was married to a girl from Cork and had a previous marriage with two children.

In common with Robbie O'Neill and Bryan Ging, he was popular and well-liked. His death would devastate a lot of people.

While Lahana was dealing with the police, the other members of the band and crew got into the bus and drove back to London. Effectively, McGowan had abandoned of of his longest-serving crew members.

He could have helped establish that Dave Jordan was a heroin addict, thus removing any doubt about the cause of death and hastening the return of his body to his native land. Only the intervention of friends of the dead man, and British Embassy negotiations, prevented the French authorities from keeping the body and recalling the Popes to France to complete their inquiries.

Four days later, Dave Jordan was buried in his native heath in Kensal in the Lake District. The tragedy of this case is that, but for a short time before, he had been clean of heroin for 10 years.

Despite Shane McGowan's denial of both drug and drink addiction, friends are worried that there will be more tragedy and they fear for the singer's own life.

The Kentish Town police acted on Sinéad O'Connor's information, but for some reason the Crown prosecution service decided not to act, despite the singer's admission that he was in possession of heroin. It is a decision that may have further tragic consequences.

"I did not have to turn up at Robbie O'Neill's inquest. I went to the police and they told me that I would have to give a statement but I did not have to turn up. I use heroin only very occasionally. To be honest I prefer poitín to heroin, and poitín is illegal. There would be nothing about this except Sinéad O'Connor went around to the police and hassled them all day. I know the police, all the young guys are fans. I got no favours, they had to do their job. But they knew the score and that's why I got off with a caution. I did not have to turn up at Highbury court... I do not know what got into her [Sinéad]; she was ranting and raving about me being in a coma, and all these paramedics arrived. It was a waste of their time. I was pissed but I wasn't in a coma.

I don't want heroin in my place. My place is my place, I don't want any of this shit [heroin] in my house. I told Robbie that he could do drink and dope. I mean I was doing him a favour. I put him up and he didn't have to pay rent. He came in and he said he was stoned on heroin. I was pissed off and told him... you idiot, don't do it again. I went to bed and slept for a long, long time. There could have been phone calls but I don't answer the phone in my sleep. The phone was in the sitting room, but it is a big flat, you would have to shout to get someone's attention on the other side of the room. I was sound asleep. I can't recall any calls. If I was on the phone, I was on the phone to God.

I remember Bryan Ging. He was a multi-drug user. This night I met him in a pub and he came back to the flat later. You know how a crowd goes back after the pub closes; to drink, listen to music and chat. At one stage someone said that Ging was not looking too well. He was like crashed out. They noticed but I didn't notice. I mean Ginger always looked dead. We tried to wake him up but he was not responding. So we called an ambulance to the house. They came in and carried him out on a stretcher. I heard he died a few hours later, 'cause we rang up the hospital. I didn't know any of his relatives so how could I tell them? Nobody else knew his family.

I didn't attend his inquest, 'cause I was busy at the time. I mean I loved the guy and I was one of the few people who did like him. A lot of people thought he was a prick; you know, he could tell a good story, like Behan, but you know the way people think of those characters as obnoxious. Bryan was a larger-than-life character, I liked him because he used to cheer me up. I was very upset about his death. It's a tragedy. I am beginning to feel that a lot of people are dying in my flat. There was this other guy, but he died of alcoholic poisoning. He was our lighting man. Big into drink, not drugs. Yeah, he died too.

Dave Jordan, the sound engineer, died in a hotel in Paris while we were on tour. Yeah, I think it was an overdose of heroin. It's all too depressing. He died suddenly while on tour. But I really don't want to discuss it. All these people... but most people that worked with The Pogues and The Popes are still alive.

I am still alive and I think I am in good shape. I drink to relax but not to get drunk. I am a slow drinker, not a desperate drinker.

Yeah, when I think of Robbie, it was a tragedy, the son of one of my best friends... like... like... like. I was doing Robbie a favour not charging rent. He seemed happy and healthy. He never got those drugs inside the house. He got them outside the house."