The good news is that Shane MacGowan has a new set of teeth for Christmas. The disappointing news is that the guy who penned “Streams of Whiskey” and “Sally MacLennane” hired a pranic healer to help overcome his fear of the dentist chair.While it’s great that the Pogues frontman, whose decades-long alcohol and drug consumption is legend, can now eat an apple, that he used an alternative medicine that claims to ‘balance, harmonise and transform the body’s energy processes’, sounds way too hippie for someone as punk as MacGowan.Shane MacGowan, A Wreck Reborn, an hour-long documentary that airs on Sky Arts on December 20 covers the story of Shane’s dental restoration as well as interviews with Johnny Depp and The Libertines front man Pete Doherty.MacGowan, who will be 58 on Christmas Day, said he has always wanted to fix his damaged mouth but it wasn't until his girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, suggested he look into more radical and alternative measures that he realised it could be done.After his last two teeth were removed in 2009 after years of alcohol and drug use, MacGowan was given dentures, which he promptly stopped wearing because they made him look like “a dickhead.”While MacGowan likens the pranic therapy that helped him into the dental chair to undergo six operations, as "better than any drug he’s ever taken", his dentist likened the surgery to climbing Everest.Speaking to the Independent dental surgeon Darragh Mulrooney said MacGowan's dental procedures that included nine hours to set 28 teeth in a titanium frame was, "as big as it gets.”'Shane MacGowan, A Wreck Reborn' airs on Sky Arts Dec 20.
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