Pogues singer Shane MacGowan has been released from hospital just in time for Christmas

Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan has been released from hospital ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day, his wife announced.

The 65-year-old Irish singer was treated at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis, a rare and potentially life-threatening condition that causes swelling of the brain.

In an update posted on Wednesday evening (November 22), his wife, Irish journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, tweeted a picture of MacGowan smiling in a hospital bed wearing a scarf and bobble hat.

Alongside the post, she wrote: “Shane has been released from the hospital!”

“We are deeply and eternally grateful to all the doctors, nurses and staff at St. Vincent, they are the best!

“And special thanks to Tom Creagh and Brian Corscadden for their help.”

MacGowan announced last year that he had been diagnosed with encephalitis in a video posted to social media on New Year's Eve.

Since his stay at St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, MacGowan's wife has been sharing updates from the singer's hospital bed with her fans, including photos of him greeting his friends.

On Sunday (November 19), Clarke tweeted that the “Fairytale of New York” singer was “so happy” to see musician Imelda May and shared a photo of the couple hugging.

May, who previously shared a post showing her visit to MacGowan in August, quoted Clarke's post and commented: “My darling Shane! Great to see you today. Best kisser.”

MacGowan was also visited by his Pogues bandmates Spider Stacy and Terry Woods last week.

On November 17, Clarke thanked her followers for their well-wishes for MacGowan and expressed her hope that he would be able to return home in time for the Christmas season.

“Shane is doing much better today!” she wrote. “I am so grateful to everyone who made it possible for him to return home, [Christmas].”

MacGowan rose to fame in the early 1980s as the frontman of Irish band The Pogues, who are best known for their Christmas hit “Fairytale Of New York.” The 1987 duet with Irish singer Kirsty MacColl is widely regarded as one of the best Christmas songs of all time.

The singer was born on Christmas Day 1957 in Pembury, Kent, to his mother Therese, a Feis Ceoil singer, and his father Maurice.

In 2018, The Pogues frontman and journalist Clarke married in a small ceremony in Copenhagen, Denmark, in front of guests including Johnny Depp.

Earlier this month, Clarke wrote about her worries in an Instagram post, saying she was suffering from “terrible fear of loss.”

“Sometimes, when you love very deeply, you are faced with terrible fears of loss that can feel so great and devastating that you don't know how to survive them, and you can imagine life without the person you love. “I can't imagine,” she wrote in an Instagram post earlier this month.

MacGowan has been confined to a wheelchair since 2015 after breaking his pelvis in a fall while leaving a studio in Dublin.