Boyzone’s Dirty Secret: Fame, Money & The Truth | Keith Duffy

Boyzone looked like private jets and millions. Keith Duffy says the truth was the opposite.

In this episode, Keith joins Matt Haycox in Dubai to talk about what fame actually costs, confidence, identity, relationships, and (often) the money people assume you’ve got.

Keith opens up about Louis Walsh’s control and how being labelled “the big lad in the back who can’t sing” shattered his self-belief, even while the band was dominating charts.

Want to know about the music business lie? How expenses get recouped, how artists get billed for the lifestyle, and why Boyzone “hadn’t a penny” when the world thought they were loaded.

And in one of the most powerful parts of the conversation, Keith shares the family journey with his daughter Mia, the shock, the waiting lists, building support when none existed, and what early intervention changed over time.

This is a conversation about fame, money, manipulation, grief, resilience, and what life looks like when the arena lights go off.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro 
1:44 – From Irish grafter to meeting Louis Walsh
7:56 – Debut to international stardom 
15:24 – The “master manipulator” and control behind the scenes
18:27 – Confidence crisis: “suppressed” + not being allowed to sing
26:16 – Losing Stephen Gately 
29:57 – The birth of Boyzlife
34:22 – Arenas vs theatres (and why intimacy wins) 
37:26 – Hollywood dreams
43:11 – The music business lie: “we had no money”
48:01 – Mia: A journey through autism
1:00:18 – Final thoughts 

Follow Keith Duffy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialkeithduffy/
Boyzlife: https://www.instagram.com/officialboyzlife

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Transcript

Meet Keith Duffy In Dubai

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We got a phone call from the the the boss of the new venture of Universal Polygram and he said guys I got great news for you. You've been chosen to be the priority act to be broken in the States by the new record company, which would have meant we were going to be away forever. We wouldn't have seen family and friends, we wouldn't have seen anybody, but it it would have been worth it for your career. We broke up for a year and that year grew into seven years. Your first appearances going on this late show just to start showing who you are. Louis just wanted to get the popularity out there. We're going on a live TV, but what are we going to do? And he goes, Oh, don't worry about that, you'll figure something out. My granny had ironed my jeans, and she'd ironed like a white vest for me to wear. Shane had given me a set of Budweiser braces that he got on some promo night in a pub somewhere. Shane says to me, uh, and I'll take off the vest, mate. Go bare chested, he said. And I'll go bare chested under my dungarees. So I said, Okay, you sure, yeah, no problem. So I did that. Every single country that we became successful in would always show that clip, that infamous Boy Zone clip. It's the most embarrassing clip ever. When did you first start to see the money in Boy Zone? Everybody thought we were millionaires and we had an apothe piss in.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

When you you talk about the fact that um it it was it was like an overnight success, and and you know, you kind of did your first show uh and it all kicked off from there. How long a period are we talking about from that first order uh so the audition happens, the next day you go out and and and you start to be announced announced to the world and there's five of you. When do you then start to go into the studio? You know, when when do you when do you rehearse? How long did it actually take you to to get a record out to get a single out? Okay, well Louis Watts was brilliant at at manipulating the media. Was he a a manager back then? He's not the record company himself, is it? He's the manager that puts you together and then he takes you off to try and get you a record contract. Absolutely, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Louis was in the music business at the time, he was booking bands into clubs and nightclubs all around Ireland. But Louis used to put together show bands to go around the country performing and gigging other people's songs, cover versions of American artists and English artists, some of them be even better than the original artists, but we see the original artists wouldn't come to Ireland because of the trouble. So that's so that's that's what Louis did. That was historically what he did, and he was a big man for um he was a big man for the Eurovision. Louis was known um in the in the circles of the Eurovision. He had a winner with Johnny Logan twice, he had a winner with uh Linda Martin once. I mean Louis's won the Eurovision three or four times, or he's been part of the winning team three or four times, so he'd be well known in those circles. Um, but he he wasn't well known outside of Ireland at all. When Boyson was coming to an end, Ronan Keaton very sadly lost his mum, and that had obviously an adverse effect on him over time, and he he didn't really deal with it at the time, he just wanted to get stuck into work, and that didn't work ultimately, and he kind of felt that he wanted to get off the the conveyor belt for a while, um, which is unfortunate at the time, but such is life because we were about to possibly break the states, we were given a fantastic opportunity, but we'd already decided to take a sabbatical of about a year at the end of '99. And it was in November, we'd another about six weeks left on our diary to that we said we'd commit to before we took a break. And it was in that time that we were in LA and we got a phone call from the the boss of the new venture of Universal Polygram, and he said, Guys, I got great news for you. You've been chosen to be the priority act to be broken in the States by the new record company, which would have meant we were going to be away forever. We wouldn't have seen family and friends, we wouldn't have seen anybody, but it it would have been worth it for your career, for your success financially, especially. So we we broke up for a year, and that year grew into seven years. And in in the in the interim of that, I came out. This is going back 23 years now because I came out with Boys On at the end of 99. My daughter Mia was born in 2000. So I didn't know what to do. I hadn't got the confidence to be a lead singer, I hadn't got the confidence to go out singing vocally on my own because I'd been suppressed for so many years by Louie Walsh. And Louie would introduce me to people as this is Keith, the big one in the back that can't sing, you know, and and it killed, it shattered my confidence, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Guys, welcome to another episode of Stripping Off with Matt Haycox, where today I have got a guest who is gonna be an absolute belter. He's a singer, he's an actor, he's a philanthropist, he's an all-around great guy, he's a businessman, and he's a good friend of mine, and he's sat here at home in Dubai. Keith Duffy, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

I love your studio, it's very comfortable. I'm glad I wrote that introduction out for you for myself, there.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

It sounds even better when you say it. Well, look, we've got so much to talk about that we could we could probably make three episodes out of this. Let's rewind back to the beginning uh and let's sit let's talk about how how it all began and and and where it

Auditions And The Notorious TV Debut

SPEAKER_00 4:55

all began.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Wow, a million years ago. Um back in 1993 in Dublin in Ireland. Um feels like a lifetime ago. It's it's funny because um my son recently turned 28, uh, which just I can't believe I had a 28-year-old. I mean, Boy Zones Boy Zone, okay, so starting back in 93 when Boy Zone kicked off, we had six, just nearly seven years of of uh of great success.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

93 is when Boy Zone was created, or when you when you had your first hit? Uh we had our first hit in 94, we were created in in 93.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Well, what were you doing before that? I mean, I mean, like were you a singer, were you a performer at all? Well, uh, I came from quite a hard working back, working class background. So I I've I've I've always been grafting, I've always been working, I've been working from an early age. Um when I was 13, 14 years of age, I was selling potatoes in Dublin. Typical potatoes that was very Irish. Yeah, I mean I worked I worked selling potatoes and fret fruit fruit and veg. I worked um in an ice cream van in the summertime. I worked in the golf driving range picking up the balls, and which was interesting because we used to do that while the golfing range was open. I worked as a bell boy, I worked as a waiter, I worked as a barman all before the age of 15 or 16. Um, and then I ended up working in a department store. My dad was the manager in the store, and he got me and my brothers in there to work for summers and Christmases and weekends and holidays and whatever. When Boy Zone started, um I had done a year's college of architecture. I had finished my final exams. I worked all the all the way through school, and um I managed to do okay in my final exams in school, and I went to college and I wanted I wanted to be an architect. Well, I I didn't, to be honest, I didn't. But I was I was good. I had a flair for for there was not enough of the things I enjoyed about school. I didn't like school at all, and I was big into my sport. I played Irish football and hurling, like I said, so um school academics weren't really my thing. So, like I said, I went to college for it for a year, and due to start the second year in the September, but I went away on my very, very first holiday. I'd never been on an airplane before. I was um 18 years of age. Never left Ireland, though. Never left Ireland, never been on an airplane, and I went to Greece, a place called Hyrsanis' in Crete with my buddies on holiday. And uh take that were huge at the time. And myself and my pals, it's quite ironic actually, because myself and my two buddies, um every every time we we go out in Greece, people used to tell us that we looked like take that, you know. We were we always dressed like boy band members, I suppose. And uh it was just ironic because there was no there was no hint of boy zone at the time. Uh it wasn't anything at the time. So it was just coincidental that I came back off that holiday and the auditions for Boy Zone were that October. So when I came out, I had a nice tan from being in Spain or in Greece, I should I say, and um I met Louis Walsh in a nightclub called The Pod. And it was the first nightclub in Ireland that wasn't a disco, you know, it wasn't like your local chart music being played by a DJ, it was proper, proper club music that was mixed. Um, it was very like the Ministry of Sound in London at the time. I was dancing on a speaker on the stage one night, and uh this guy starts kind of pulling up my trousers, and I was looking down and he said, Can I talk to you? Can I talk to you? But this guy's name was Louis Walsh, uh, infamous now from the X Factor and TV shows and such. But Louis brought me into the room and he asked me, Could I sing? And I come from a very musical family. My dad was a great singer and great guitar player, piano player, my brother's a great guitar player. Um I was into percussion, I did, I was in a marching band, I played side drum for years, and then I played the kit in a couple of rock bands in my teenage years. So I was very, you know, I come from a very musical family. But about a week previous of this, I saw the front page of an Irish newspaper, and it had the Irish Take That auditions written on it, and it was a photograph of Shane Lynch who's in Boy Zone with me, and Colin Farrell. So Colin Farrell was in the original lineup for Boy Zone. A lot of people don't realise that. Um, and I saw that these guys were were starting off an Irish version of Take That basically, and um I knew Shane really well. He grew up down the street from me where I grew up, and I dated one of his sisters years ago, and uh we worked out together in the same gym. You know, told him I was from um a musical family, and um I said to him, Is this to do with the band with Shane Lynch and Colin Farrell? And he goes, Yeah, do you know the lads? I said, Yeah, yeah, I know I know both of them already. And he goes, Oh, that's great, that that makes for a great friendship already. So Louis really wanted me to come to the final audition, which he told me was on the following Wednesday, but we know mobile phones back then. So I gave my mother's uh I gave my mother's home phone number, but I wasn't really staying at home much at that time. I was kind of uh I was you know drifting between one mate's flat and another mate's flat and stuff like that. I wasn't even going into college that much anymore. So anyway, um I partied that weekend. Um come Wednesday, I I was in no humour of going for any audition or anything like that, so um I didn't turn up and I just thought it would disappear and go away. And my my mum got word to me, my mother got word to me to say that a man had been on the phone asking why I didn't turn up, and my mother said, Look, he's having one more night of auditions, and he really wants you to go. At this stage, they'd gone from six or seven hundred people down to like ten, and I was gone straight in at the end. Um so it was down to eight people the night I turned up, and six people actually joined the band that night. Six that was a Thursday night in in October '93, and six of us were in the final cut. Colin Farrell didn't make the final cut. I'm sure he's disgusted, you know. He went on to have an amazing career for late. But there were six of us at the time in the original lineup. And uh Louis Waltz said to us, Okay, guys, the first thing you're doing as a band, you're on the late late show tomorrow night. So the late late show would be the most infamous live chat show in Ireland, and it's been on for 40 or 50 years.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

And so, and just to be clear then, so so after this audition, the six of you have been picked, so you you now know you are the band. I mean, there's no song, there's no recording, it's you you've just got the six of you ready to go out, and your first gig, well not gig, your first appearance is going on this late show just to start showing who you are.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

That's it. Louis just wanted to get the popularity out there, and he wanted to get the awareness that we're we we we exist out there. And we said, Well, what are we going to do on the TV? We're going on a live TV, but what are we going to do? And he goes, Oh, don't worry about that, you'll figure something out, he said. So, so we we were all talking, what we gonna wear? What are we gonna do? Um, and Shane's sister Khtara was a choreographer, so she came out to the TV studios with us on the Friday night and she put together like a little a little dance routine uh to a club song that was out at the time. Uh Burn baby, burn baby, I'm my energy. And uh I went out and I was wearing white jeans, and my granny had ironed my jeans, and she'd ironed like a white vest for me to wear. Shane had given me a set of Budweiser braces that he got on some promo night in a pub somewhere. And um we were in the dressing room, and I have my white vest on and my white jeans and the Budweiser braces, and Shane says to me, uh, and I'll take off the vest, mate. Go bre go bare chested, he said, and I'll go bare chested under my dungarees. So I said, Okay, you sure, yeah, no problem. So I did that. And to this day we still get we still get well.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

It just sounds so 90s boy band now, doesn't it? When you look back at all the pictures of people with the with the denim, with the dungarees, with the with the no-shirts.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Oh man. But every single country that we became successful in would always show that clip, that infamous boy's own clip, the first clip on the show. I mean, you must have seen it yourself. I mean, everybody has seen it, it's the most embarrassing clip

Louis Walsh, Eurovision Roots, First Hits

SPEAKER_02 12:40

ever.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

You look at it now with a lot. We're gonna play play it over this. Yeah, put it over the year.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

It's funny. Um, we we came back, I think, um maybe 20 years later, and we got dressed up in the same clothes and done it again on the same show just for some fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

What happened to this six sixth fella?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

There were six guys, so there was Rowan Keaton, Stephen Gately, God rest his soul. Um, there was Shane Lynch, myself, then there was a guy called Mark Walton, and there was another guy called Richard Rock. Um, Mark Walton, it was actually his idea to put the band together. He was a friend of Shane's, and they approached Louis Walsh together with the idea. They'd gone to see new kids on the block in the point depot in Dublin, and they kind of thought, you know, we we could we could do that in Ireland, we could have an Irish version of that. So they went to Louis Walsh to say, look, you know, we want to put a band together, and we believe you might be able to help us do it. And then Louis ran with the idea because he knew everybody in the music business. So after the first photo shoot, Louis didn't like Mark Walt uh Mark uh Walton in the shop. So he he he took about the band and he looked better with five, and then Richie Rock, who is the son of a very famous Irish singer, Irish folk singer, uh Dickie Rock. Um it was his son, but unfortunately at the time Richards Richard probably wasn't um professional enough for Louis Walter's taste. So Richard was pushed aside, and one of the guys that never made it past the auditions was Mikey Graham. Okay, and Louis still had a number for him, so he kind of came down. He Mikey got down to the last seven, and they only took six. So we rang Mikey up and we got Mikey, and then that was the boy's own. That was that's when Boy Zone was properly formed with its original members, and that's when we got our record deal. So that was it, man. Our lives all changed overnight, then you know. We got we went to the UK, we did a tour called the Smash It's Smash It's Road Show, which was a genius stroke to get us on that tour because everybody on that tour was already a signed artist. There was E17, Bad Boys Inc. Um, EYC, um, all these bands, PJ and Duncan, which is Anathon Deck, um and we all toured together. We were the unknown artist on the on the road, everybody else was well known. We'd We'd Love Me for a Reason was the first song that we performed on that tour, and it was a tour of all the arenas all around the UK, and all of the bands used to travel on the bus together. There were great great days, like 90s pop music was a great time in music, it was a great time for music. So we were we were up against two other bands on the road. There was a band called Juice and um another guy called Nick Howard, I think his name was, and we were the three new acts on the tour, and every night there was a big, big, three big dump bins at the back of the venue, and you put in your favourite band, and it was a competition to win the opportunity to sing live on the Top of the Pops, um was it the Smash Hits pole winners party, which was being hosted by Will Smith in the London arena, and it was a big, big do. A lot of big American artists were over, a lot of really big famous singers were on take that was performing. So it was a really big deal to to um so if we won, we get the opportunity to perform live on the TV show. So we won and uh we got to perform live on the TV show, and it just blew up after that. It blew up after that. We um I think Love Me for a Reason went to number two for Christmas. We didn't get the number one spot, unfortunately, on that one. Um and then uh you know, we brought out Key to My Life Next. Um we brought out which we wrote ourselves, it was our first own own written song. Um, and then and then I just like I say it went nuts. We were on air, we were living on aeroplanes, private jets, five-star hotels, our whole life's just changed. Um, we were sent to Germany by the record company. Um they just dropped Love Me for a Reason on the radio in Germany. That became a big hit while we were promoting that in Germany. Did a radio promotional tour of Germany that was supposed to last maybe a week or ten days. The record company were getting in contact with us to say, look, it's dropping in Belgium. Um, do you mind not coming home? Can you go straight to Belgium? Leave all your clothes into the hotel, laundry to be washed and dried and cleaned for you. Um we'll cover all the bills, blah blah blah. Then look, Holland is breaking for you. Can you go to so uh a trip that was supposed to be like a week to ten days ended up running it to six weeks, seven weeks, and all of the all of Europe started breaking for us. Um, Southeast Asia then just went absolutely nuts. Um, out here in the Middle East, um Bahrain, um everything, everything just there, and our lives just changed overnight, and we it it it's so successful that we couldn't appreciate it, we couldn't enjoy it because um we were so tired. You know, you actually got to rest when you went on tour. Because when you go on tour, you only work at night time. You're on stage for two hours every night, but the days are pretty much your own. When you're on a promotional tour, you're up at six o'clock in the morning to do radio, then you're doing TV, then you might be doing, and remember, there was no digital cameras back then, it was all film. So when we were doing a photo shoot, you'd have to get all the lights set up, take one photograph, and the guy would put the print under his arm to heat it up, and then they'd open it up. And if if the lighting was off, we'd have to sit down and wait for the lighting guy to fix the lights, and it could take all day, and then you might you you know there'd be five of us in the picture, and we'd have a stylist there, and they'd want different looks for every shot. So every time you'd done a couple of shots, you had to shake off your clothes against a new and it just the whole day just used to be no time to train or exercise in the gym. Your diet was awful because you're just grabbing food on the go. And what should have been a really, really enjoyful time in our lives, it ended up just becoming tiresome.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

When you you talk about the fact that um it it was it was like an overnight success, and and you know, you kind of did your first show uh and it all kicked off from there. How long a period are we talking about from that first audit? Uh so the audition happens, the next day you go out and and and you start to be announced announced to the world, and there's five of you. When do you then start to go into the studio? You know, when when do you when do you rehearse? How long did it actually take you to to get a record out to get a single out? Okay, well Louis Wallace was brilliant at at manipulating the media. Was he a uh a manager back then? He's not the record company himself, is he? He's the manager that puts you together and then he takes you off to try and get you a record contract. Absolutely, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Louis was in the music business at the time, he was booking bands into clubs and nightclubs all around Ireland. But Louis used to put together show bands to go around the country performing and gigging other people's songs, cover versions

Overnight Fame And The Grind Of Promotion

SPEAKER_02 19:15

of American artists and English artists, some of them be even better than the original artists, but you see, the original artists wouldn't come to Ireland because of the trouble. So that's so that's that's what Louis did. That was historically what he did, and he was a big man for um he was a big man for the Eurovision. Louis was known um in the in the circles of the Eurovision. He had a winner with Johnny Logan twice, he had a winner with uh Linda Martin once. I mean Louis won the Eurovision three or four times, or he's been part of the winning team three or four times, so he'd be well known in those circles. Um, but he he wasn't well known outside of Ireland at all. When Boyson was coming to an end, Ronan Keaton very sadly lost his mum, and that had obviously an adverse effect on him over time. And he didn't really deal with it at the time, he just wanted to get stuck into work, and that didn't work ultimately, and he kind of felt that he wanted to get off the the conveyor belt for a while, um, which is unfortunate at the time, but such is life because we were about to possibly break the states. We were given a fantastic opportunity, but we'd already decided to take a sabbatical of about a year at the end of '99. And it was in November, we'd another about six weeks left on our diary to that we said we'd commit to before we took a break. And it was in that time that we were in LA and we got a phone call from the the boss of the new venture of Universal Polygram, and he said, Guys, I got great news for you. You've been chosen to be the priority act to be broken in the States by the new record company, which would have meant we were going to be away forever. We wouldn't have seen family and friends, we wouldn't have seen anybody, but it it would have been worth it for your career, for your success uh financially, especially. So we we broke up for a year, and that year grew into seven years. And in in the in the interim of that, I came out. This is going back 23 years now because I came out at Boys On at the end of 99. My daughter Mia was born in 2000. So I didn't know what to do. I hadn't got the confidence to be a lead singer, I hadn't got the confidence to go out singing vocally on my own because I'd been suppressed for so many years by Louis Walsh. And Louis would introduce me to people as this is Keith, the big one in the back that can't sing, you know, and and it killed it shattered my confidence, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

How does the dynamic work in the band like that? Or or not so much the the dynamic, but what about the politics of the fact that you know look you guys are spoken about like you guys are presuming what you and you and Shane didn't don't don't get as much attention f from a singing perspective, and you know, Ronan and Steve Steve always get the singing. Did you just accept it is what it is, or does it piss you off? Does it drive a wedge between you and the other lads?

SPEAKER_02 21:52

No, it didn't drive a wedge. It did piss me off, though, because I did you know my my dad was a very talented singer. My dad was a great vocalist, you know, and I used to, as a kid, go To see my dad performing all the time, and for him to be so passionate about music and for me to be in a band now, he was delighted. But then when I wasn't singing much, it was I kind of felt like I was letting him down. So, and I needed the credibility for myself, I needed people to see my capabilities. And if I'm not getting the opportunity to, you know, to go to the forefront, it's it's a waste of time. So I was going to leave the band in the early days. Our first up tempo song was a call-a song called So Good. So we got a choreographer in to do a dance routine. And look, I'm not gonna lie, I was never much of a dancer, you know what I mean. I was I was a tough man of the football pitch. Dancing wasn't my forte, I had two left feet. Um so it took it always took me twice as long as the rest of the lads to learn the dance routines, and even at that, I'd get them backwards. Um, but Louis Walsh and his partner, who was other another manager of us called John Reynolds, who's passed away since God rest him, they both came over to see this performance on top of the pops. And um obviously I wasn't great. And our tour manager, who became our manager later, a guy called Mark Blunkett, we were living in the Langham Hilton at the time in London, and he was dropping us back to the hotel, and uh he said, Duster, they're all the boys called me Duster, and he said, Duster, you know, uh, can I come up to your room for a minute and have a chat with you? And I thought that sounds ominous, you know, what's going on? So we went up and we sat down in in my bedroom. He goes, Look, I've been asked by Louis Walsh and John Reynolds to sit down and talk to you. Um, they're quite concerned about your performance tonight. I said, Okay, the dance and I take it. He goes, Yeah. He said, Look, maybe it might be an idea to go into the dance studios a little bit earlier than the rest of the lads and get a bit of one-on-one time with the choreographer and you know, try to do it that way. You know, he said, Look, I did it and it was the best thing I ever did, and you know, don't take it personally, just just you know, just it's it's not your your strengths are going, give yourself a a good opportunity. And I got really pissed off with that. I kind of thought, you know what, I'm not enjoying this. I'm not singing the songs, I'm not a great dancer, I'm not getting the opportunities I thought I would get in the band. Any job I ever did, I always took pride in the work that I did. I always took pride, I always did a good job. Even if it was just counting and pricing 10-inch dinner plates in uh in the hardware department, I would do it and I'd make it look good and I'd walk away from it going, I did that, and I would take pride in my work. I I couldn't find a part of the job in the band that I could take pride in. Everybody did something better than me. I need to find something that I can do that's that I can take pride in. So I rang my dad and I said, Look, dad, I think I'm gonna drop drop out of the band. This is indeed this was early enough, early days. And he said, Why? He said, Keith, over five or six hundred people auditioned for that band, and you got chosen for a reason. They know what they're doing. Like, what's your problem? I said, Well, look, I'm not getting a chance. I feel suppressed. I don't take pride in my work. I said, I need to do something that I'm proud of. And I he said, Look, he said, find whatever that is that they saw in you, find what that is, and polish it. So I I I took my dad's advice and I knuckled down and I start ringing Louis Walsh more often. And I said, Look, I want to sing more, I want to do more neat vocals, and and it worked because then what Louis did was Louis sent me in to work with a producer called um Ray Madman Hedges. And uh Ray, I wrote some songs at Ray and I sang them, and then on all of our live shows, then I used to sing my own live songs. Okay. So I was happy with that, but also he allowed me to put one of my songs on the B side of one of the boys' own singles, and the Boy's own song No Matter What, which to this day is in the Guinness Book of Records, is one of the biggest or the biggest selling boy band song of all time. And nobody ever told us the rules and the regulations of how the music business worked on a financial basis. So we had no idea at the time that a C D or a tape that we had originally, and then it went to C D, but the B side is 50% of the publishing royalties of the A side. Okay, so it's equal. So some so it doesn't matter if you're not a very talented songwriter. Put any type of crap on the B side and you will get 50% of the publishing royalties. Now, in Ireland at the time, back in the 90s, publishing royalties were tax exempt, and we pay a very high bracket of tax on everything else. So publishing royalties. So if you write a song, if you write a play, if you write a movie, if you write anything, it's tax-free. We didn't know that. We put we put cover versions out. Daydream Believer by the monkeys, we recorded that song and put it on the B side of Rummy for a reason. So we made the monkeys a load of money, whoever wrote that song. We could have put Baba Black Sheep on this and made ourselves some money, but we nobody ever told us. This is how we all found out. We put a song called Where Are You Being that I wrote on the B side of No Matter What, no matter what was written by Angelo Weber, and it was for a musical called Whistle Down the Wind, and it became our biggest hit of all time at the time. And I had the B side. And we were in Newcastle in the Malmaison hotel in Newcastle the night before a gig, and our accountants

Band Politics, Confidence, And Songwriting Royalties

SPEAKER_02 26:50

came into the room and they gave they gave me a check. There was no check for anybody else, the man, there was only a check for me, and a check for Andre Lloyd Rebber. And it was a considerable amount of money. And I go, What's this for? He goes, Well, your royalty's off the B side of no matter what. And I said, Wow. And they said, Yeah, it's 50% of the A side. So that's when everybody started writing. That's when everybody wanted to start writing the songs and getting the B sides because then we realized there's money to be made here, you know. So, yeah, so so how does it work? Um, Louis Walsh was the manager. He went and he got Polygram Records in Dublin to sign us to one of their companies called Polydor. Polydor, then we had another we had a uh a hit in Ireland um with Polydor, and then the UK uh sister of Polydor um decided to sign us for the UK. Then our first song was released in the UK, which was Love Me for a Reason. That was a big hit in Ireland as well, and then Love Me for a Reason was the one that kind of broke us into all the other territories. Um so now our main record company was based in London, and then we went on touring for for six or seven years, um, going into the studio, recording the songs, going into the dance studio, learning the choreography. Um, I mean, even if there were slow songs, we still had choreography the five of us. I mean, Lovey for a reason was literally a hand movement that was like, don't love me for fun, girl, let me be that one girl, you know. So they're all the different kind of um unified dance moves that we did together, and that was it until, like I said, we we took that year out into in the end of '99 into 2000, and we just we just disappeared, didn't see each other for seven years. At the end of 2007, BBC put us together to do um a medley of three of our songs for children in need for the big charity Children in Need Show. And we got back together for about three or four days in London, and we rehearsed the medley and put a dance routine together for the three songs that were in the medley uh to perform on children in need. We had a great time in the studio. We were messers, so we always did a bit of banter, a bit of fun. Um we realized that, God, this is great fun. Maybe we can go back. We're all a little bit more mature now. We've all gone off and done solo projects. I went into Coronation Street for years. Um, I became much more known for Kieran McCarthy than Keith Duffy. So going back to the boys after doing that, um, we decided what about if we get back together and we go back on the road? Would it work? Would people come? Will they buy the tickets? Who knows? So we got our promoters and our agents back on hand, and and we put a tour on sale and it sold out in like four minutes in 2007. Into 2008. We third 2008. The third went into 2009, and we went into the studio and we started writing and recording a new album, which ultimately was released called Brother. And the reason for that was in October of 2009, the 10th of October 2009, unfortunately Stephen Gately lost his life in in Majorca. He had a pullinedema, which basically meant that he had a heart defect that was undetected, and it was hereditary. His uncle had died similar circumstances a couple of months previous. Um he he he vomited and and unfortunately choked and his vomited his lungs didn't uh didn't clear out his his his airwaves and and he he died. Uh and that was a really, really, really difficult time. When when had you last spoken to him prior? We we we'd been in the studio recording the album. We'd all been together quite a bit, and myself and Stephen, all through the years when Boys on Wear Together remained great friends. And then he was on holidays in Majorca, and unfortunately, we got a call to say that he'd passed away, and we we all we all flew straight to Majorca actually, and um we we put all the the arrangements in place to get him to bring him home. Um, it was a very difficult time, very, very sad time. Um, we we slept actually in the church with Stephen the night before his funeral. It was a very funny night because Stephen had a great sense of humour, and it was all very surreal for us. You know, you're having emotions come over you, like waves of emotions coming over you. One minute you're laughing, the next minute you're crying. Um, but it was on the radio that we had decided to spend the night in the church. And fans flew in from all over the world, they did the gardens of the church to get it ready for the funeral, they painted the railings, they cleaned the streets. It was unbelievable. The the kindness and the generosity that people showed us was mind-blowing. So about two o'clock in the morning, we're lying on the on the floor in front of the altar in our sleeping bags, and I could hear somebody going, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, I don't know who's that like who's in the church. Now the church was surrounded by police. We knew we were safe. But I said I looked up, it was Daniel O'Donnell and Majella, his wife. And he's a lovely, lovely man, a real sincere, gentle man. And he just he he heard on the radio that we were in the church and he popped down with his wife to say hello, which was really nice. And that was it, we didn't know what to do down after we lost the it was never going to be the same again. So that was in 2009. Um, we toured again in 2011, and it was too soon. We were messed up. Myself and Shane were messed up. We we we we drank too much, we did too much of everything, and ultimately by the end of the tour, we were we were broken, so we had we had to just stop and go away. Um and why were we doing that big because of the pain from Steve? Yeah, there was too you get used to the dynamics of five people on stage, and he was such an amazing performer, he's such a talent. Losing him was just a huge void that we didn't foresee before we went on tour without him. That was 2011. And then in 2013, we start getting phone calls of record company and management going, look, you boys, it's your 20th anniversary. Do you not want to get back together and do a tour for your 20th anniversary? We'd had two years without seeing each other, and we decided to get back in and and and see how we'd feel about going back on the road again, and um we did. And we we we brought Stephen with us this time, you know, on stage, uh all footage, video footage, all sorts of stuff to make him feel really part of the show, and that helped us a huge amount. So the tour in 2013, the 20th anniversary tour, was was was a great uh a great time. It was at that time myself and Brian Um had always met each other over the years. Brian's career started with Westlife on the boys' own tour, they were our support artists back in '98. So they went straight into a Niber Arena tour. We played the back of trucks, we played nightclubs, discos, we had no clothes, we had to buy our own clothes. We wore and Shane's dad owns a garage, he was a mechanic, and he gave us overalls to wear on stage. Um, orange, bright, orange overalls we wore on stage. You know, Westlife came in, got a record deal straight away off the back of the success of Boys on with Louis Walsh, and Rowan Keaton was their manager at the time as well. I remember we and the press at the time. That wasn't uh just a publicity gigaton. It was a complete publicity gig from Louis's point of view. Boys Own were gonna come to the end of the days quite soon. Ronan's no doubt gonna have a solo career. Louis wanted to manage Ronan and keep Ronan beside him. How to do that? Well, give Ronan a part of the man of the management of Westlife. So we were touring in Thailand in in 1996, 97, and my dad, I rang my dad one night and he said, Enjoy yourself, son,

Deals, Money Myths, And 360 Contracts

SPEAKER_02 34:00

your days are pretty much numbered. I said, How do you mean? He says, Well, while you guys are touring Southeast Asia, Louis watches all over the TV and the press putting together a new boy band from Sligo. I said, You're kidding me? He said, No, he says, I'm telling me, he's getting ready for your demise, so he has something ready to go when you guys decide to split up. He got Ronan to become part of the management, which obviously then, you know, encouraged Ronan to want Westlife to come on tour with us. Because bands back in those days would spend a huge amount of money to be your support act because they're getting a ready-made audience. Westlife came on for free, they didn't have to pay on because Ronan and Louis were their management. But that's how I met Brian. Now, me and Brian were similar characters, we could always get on well. When he was living in Australia and I'd be touring with Boy Zone, I'd always go out on the piss with Brian and have a bit of fun, play golf with Brian. We were invited to play a lot of the same charity events and golfing together, and I'd met him on one of these charity events. We played golf, and he goes, He said, I said, How are you getting on? You just come home from Australia. He said, I'm playing Wheelings in Dublin on Saturday night. Wheelings is a very credible rock venue. So to go from a boy band to playing Wheelings is pretty cool. And Brian was going to gig there with his full life band with all his own songs that he had written and released in Australia. So I said to him, I'll come and see your show. I was finishing up in the West End and a handful of stars that play. So I went to see Brian's show with my son Jay, and we've a myself and my son have a lot of communal friends. Um, so we went to see Brian's show after the gig, he was brilliant. He blew the roof off the place. After the gig, we're in the dressing room having a few pints of Guinness. And Brian said to me, What are you up to at the moment? I says, Well, I'm I'm I've just finished writing an autobiographical show, then I go on a tour. I've done a deal with um the Hilton Hotel Group and I'm going to do the function rooms of the Hilton Hotels across the UK. And I said, I'm very, I'm very excited. He goes, Oh, that sounds a great idea, man. And I was telling the stories, you know, Pavarotti and the Bee Gees and this, that, and the other. And he goes, Oh wow, I'd love to do something like that, he said. And I'm kind of thinking, I wanted to do a one-man show, but at the same time, if it was in the one venue every night, like a residency, that would be fine. But the fact that we're going to be touring, it's a very lonely world on the road, and you're touring on your own. So I said, Look, why don't we rewrite it together and we'll change it? And the two of us will do it. That means you've got the back catalogue of all the boys' own hits and the Westlife hits. The Boy Zone fans and the Westlife fans, if they're not the same. And I said, and we'd have a great bit of fun. So he said, Yeah. So we rewrote the show, we put it on sale, and it sold out in four hours. The whole tour, 52 dates sold out in four hours. Four nights into the show. It was called Boys' Life Stories Laughter Music. It wasn't Boys' Life was never supposed to be a recording artist. Boys' Life was just the name of an autobiographical show. And organically it grew into a recording artist. And we went into the studio and wrote an album and so forth. And we've been singing and gigging ever since. But it started off like an autobiographical show. It was called Boys' Life Stories Laughter Music. And three or four nights in, we'd so much material. The first show was three and a half hours long, it was way too long. So we cut it down to an hour 20 to an hour 40 and took half the content out and realized we had another show ready to go. So we put another show on stage story, last and music part two for the following year, and we put that on sale, and that's all. And and we until because only COVID happened, we we we've been non-stop for the last seven, eight years now. So it's um you know it's it's great. And Brian's helped me enormously with my my vocal ability. We sat down, we did vocal coaching, and we sat down, we wrote the shows together. We just wrote recorded our own studio album, and uh as you know, we were we were here gigging in the um Jamaira Golf Estates on Saturday night, and it was great fun.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

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SPEAKER_00 38:26

How does it feel doing the smaller stuff after after obviously so many years of doing the big stuff? I mean, look, we we talked about it a minute ago when you you had the eight the eight-man theatre and then the 125,000 people. When you're used to doing boys owning, well, I don't know how big an arena is, but you're doing 20, 30, 40,000 seats and and and you're doing that regular, and then now you do like the boys' life stuff, which which is to a to a smaller audience. I mean, does does that ever hurt the ego? No, not at all, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

And I can understand the question. It's amazing to play the big venues. The array the arena tours are great, stadiums are just there's an old saying, stadiums are for the bands, theatres are for the fans. All right, if you're a fan of a group, you'd much rather see them in the theatre than you would like to see them in a stadium. So literally, you might as well watch it on TV if you're in a stadium. Uh we didn't do any, we didn't do a stadium tour. We we did a couple of stadiums, we'd never done a stadium tour. Our tours were predominantly in Boys on were arenas. So you've got the MEN, you've got the Wembley Arena, you've got all these arenas around the cities of uh I do it. There's a gorgeous one now in Glasgow. Um, or what's it called? I can't remember the name of it, but it's the it's I got to perform on it with Boys on in the last 25th anniversary tour that we did in 2018. Um I can't remember the name of it, but it's stunning. It's a wall, it's a wall of people. It's like a how half a half a um what do you call the the big circular venues? I can't remember what it's it's it's it's half circum. Huh? Like a coliseum. Yeah, it's like it's like it's like a half a Coliseum, right? And it's just a wall of people. There's loads of layers to it, and it just feels like they're on your on your on the stage with you, but there's millions, it's it's a fantastic. The hydro, the hydro Glasgow, brilliant venue. Um when you're backstage, Belfast um was our first gig back after seven years away, and it's to call the Odyssey in Belfast, and it holds about 18,000 people, which is which is a lot of people, and it's that roar, that scream of the crowd that I hadn't heard in seven years. And we're all we're all under the stage, ready to pop up in our in our trap doors to come onto the stage after being gone for seven years, and that energy and that roar of the crowd, just you're under that stage, man, and you are shitting yourself. You go, I'm not, I mean, nerves aren't even it's unbelievable when you haven't done it so long, and then you're you're catapulted onto the stage, and the energy you take off the crowd, you just honestly, you perform the best you can ever perform. They lift you, the crowd lifts you, and it's an amazing experience. I'd be lying to you if I told you I don't miss that. Of course they do, it's it's an amazing feeling. But the theaters that we gig in now, myself and Brian, it's very personable. You know, we see the whites of people's eyes, they they they go on a journey with us. It's it's great to have that the super success and the super fame of arenas, but there's something gorgeous about playing the theaters as an artist, as a singer, as someone that likes to entertain people, it's it's much more personable and it's really, really beautiful, it's an enjoyable experience.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

When you've been you know doing a good few years of of the band like in Boy Zone and you and you talk about taking hiatus, uh as in at that point, like you know, Jenny, we're gonna take a year off and come back, or or you know, people like to break off and and do solo stuff. I mean, you know, I I may be completely wrong, but you know, w when you look at so many other people do it, it it it it never works out well for them, you know. Like um a big time TV actor in the UK, you know, wants to go and break Hollywood so they go, they never break Hollywood, then they they never get back on the TV

Reunion, Tragedy, And Carrying Stephen’s Legacy

SPEAKER_00 42:00

back in England again either. Or you know, uh some someone who's been who's been good as a four or five piece band, they uh you know they want to be the solo star to go off and just try solo stuff, never you know, never works. W when when you take that break, or when you go and try something, do you have do you have that fear of failing and and then and then the inability to go back to what was working out for you anyway, or are you just let's say sink single-minded on on your goals, on your journey and your career progression, and if and if that means that you know it doesn't work out and some doors have been closed and you don't care?

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Yeah, so that's uh an interesting question. I mean, I I'd be guilty of that myself. When I was in Coronation Street, um I I you know uh I didn't have a huge amount of acting experience before then, a lot of amateur stuff when I was a kid, but I always loved being on stage. Um I you know, you learn the craft quite quick in a soap. They shoot at a very, very fast speed. They could shoot up to 10 episodes a week, you know, and you you're only given the you're given the scripts maybe two or three weeks before the shoot, but you can't learn in that head because you you're you're already in in a shoot. So you learn your lines the night before you shoot them, really. I mean you you read your storyline, you read your scripts, but you learn the lines off book the night before because you're shooting every day and they don't shoot in sequence, right? So they don't shoot you know one episode after the other, they'll do they'll do blocks of five. So you might do a scene from episode five, a scene from episode three, a scene from episode two, and you could be working with two different directors on different blocks. So it's it's a real you know, you learn the job very, very quick on the job in a soap. It's the I think it's the toughest acting gig there is. But when my contract was my first contract was coming up, I wanted to do more work. I I loved being behind the camera and I loved the the job. So, like anybody, I kind of had ideas of grandeur. And I went over to LA for the for uh pilot season. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I went over pilot season is usually uh from the end of February to March, right through uh May, June, April, May. And it's it's When they cast all the shows that are coming out on Netflix, on Apple TV, on Amazon, the movies, they the all the indie movies, it's when they cast for everything. So everybody from all over the world that wants to be an actor is in LA at that time, and it's a rat race, you know. If you're going for a specific role with one of the bigger studios, you go into a room, a waiting room, and there's 20 people sitting around the room, all going for your part. These people are trying to take your money off you, they're trying to stop you paying your mortgage. They're you know what I mean, and you're in that room and there's nobody talking because you're all in you're all you're all against each other, and it's a rat race, it's really tough. I mean, one or two percent of actors make it to the top level, you know, and that's what everybody's dreaming of. So I went over anyway, and um I got very close to some really big stuff. I got I got I was down to the last two for a show called Boardwalk Empire years ago, and I was actually told I had the gig, and they they they always give the gig to two people, and at the last minute they decide which one it's getting. So they I was contracted and everything from my where I was going to be put up in New York and Chelsea, where I was gonna be living, and and and it's it's life-changing. It's life-changing. You know, the minimum, the minimum payout, I think, on a on an American show or was at the time is a $25,000 per episode, but then you get a repeat fee of like 37% or something like that. But and if you're doing if there's eight episodes and it's $25,000, you know, a quarter of a million, and you're doing what you love to do. How quick do they record compared to like a UK? No, that's that uh UK soap is completely different. This this stuff you prepare well, you prepare properly, you have time to digest the scripts, to understand it, to work with the director, to get your creative mind working, you know. But like I said, with the question you asked, people that leave a band to go solo, actors leave in a soap to to to go and be a movie star. I mean, it happens all the time. Some people do make it true, most people don't. You know, it's it's it's a tough one, it's a real tough one. Um I had I had to come home with my tail between my legs, you know. If you don't push yourself and if you don't have ideas of grandeur, and if you don't take a chance, you'll never know. You know what I mean? And and that's the thing. And if you don't make it, well, at least you gave it a chance. It's it's difficult, it's tough. You know, Ronan left Boy Zone for a solo career, and he's had a a relatively very successful career. I I do think Ronan is a very hard worker, he's a grafter, he works hard. My god, the hours that guy works, he's he's driven. But I'm sure he would have loving his solo career to go further than it did, but that's because he's hungry, you know what I mean? Who who wouldn't? You know, you you get the likes of the success that Robbie Williams had uh after coming out of take that. So I mean Robbie played Nepworth, that's massive, mate. He done he done a stadium tour. I mean, a one man coming out of a boy band from fucking Stockport, you know, or or is this from is he from Stockport? Stoke, Stoke, Stoke or Trent. That's a huge success story. He was bigger than Take That everywhere. Now, Take That went on to do a stadium tour themselves later on. But the Gary Barlow, he didn't go on. I mean, Gary Barlow's a great singer, great songwriter, but he did he didn't make it as a solo star, you know what I mean? Not not to this not to the level that Robbie did, you know what I mean. So there's loads of examples of people that that they have a successful career, but it's not to the level that they would have likened it to be, you know. When did you first start to see the money in boys though? How everybody thought we were millionaires and we hadn't a pot to piss in. Really? Everybody thought we were so famous, and everybody thought we were millionaires, and we hadn't had a penny. We nope, we we most fans get an advanced payment. Like Westlight's got an advanced payment. We never got an advanced payment. Our record company never paid us in advance. And I was telling you before the record company said, get your clothes cleaned and we'll pick up the bill. You know, the flying is around private jets and chauffeur-driven cars. We're looking at all this, go, wow, this is amazing. Until we get like when we do start to make money and the money does start to roll in, it's nowhere near what you think it's going to be. So you your accountants will audit the record company and find out what money is due to you, what's coming, what's what you know, what expenses have you got. And then you're looking at all these chauffeur-driven cars and private jets all being recouped out of your money, right? But it's not recouped at the price that the record company paid for it, they put their own levy on top for paying for it. So if you're gonna buy, if you're gonna rent a private jet for 25 grand to bring it to Paris, right? By the time you pay that back, you're probably paying back 32 grand. Because you're paying back the 25 grand plus a 15% levy for the record company. So they they recoup anything that you spend. You go into the hotel bar, you're signing all the drinks to your room, you're buying people over their drinks, and you're living like a king, and then two or three years later you realize that bar bill was 1800 quid and it's coming out of your money with a 15% levy on top, you know. So you're not educated like this. Nobody explains this to you, nobody breaks it down and and helps you understand how the music business works. Now it's not like that anymore. Since downloading and streaming and all these different platforms, are legal or not legal, um, the 90% of the revenue of the music business is gone. But there's nobody buying albums or CDs anymore. So the mute the money's gone. The money in our business now is is selling tickets.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

So back in the boys days, um, obviously you were signing bills and and the record company taking care of things, but were you given like an actual wage to live on as well?

SPEAKER_02 49:17

No, no, we we uh in the early days we used to give about 30 quid a week, 30 quid a week each, which was crazy. Um we got it we got paid, our first paycheck was 10 grand each. And I remember when that

From Arenas To Theatres: Why Intimacy Wins

SPEAKER_02 49:30

paycheck came through, I thought I was the richest man in Ireland. How long did you be in the band then? Sorry? How long did you be in?

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Two and a half years. That was the first time you were in kind of money.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

Yeah, the pipeline payments in the music business take a long time to come through. And now obviously you're touring, and the touring is your own money. That's nothing to do with the record company. Now, the bands of today, the likes of One Direction when they were out, they signed what's called a 360 deal. Right? 360 obviously made a full circle, so that means the record company are not doing what the record company used to, which is just do the records. Then you've got your agent and your promoter to do the concerts, then you've got your merchandising company that do the merchandising, and it's all separate entities. The record company changed all that and they created what's called 360 contracts for all the guys coming through, like the X-Factor that might that might get a record deal. And then the guys coming through that want the record deal, they just want to sing, they want to do what they love to do. Some of them want to be really famous, some of them just love the craft and they want to sing, but they had no choice but to sign a 360 deal. So the 360 deal incorporated your merchandising, your ticket sales, yeah, every single thing you do. Better for you as an artist. No, no, because the record company are getting a piece of everything then.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

You know what I mean? Like that should be all yours. I I I guess it could maybe cuts both ways. Yeah, they get a piece of everything, but they've also got the like great reach to be able to be able to get you into flight.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

But the comparison I'm making is the record deals evolved compared to the record deals of now. There's no money in the ones of now. You're getting so okay. So 20% of something is better than 100% than nothing. That's fair enough. Our record deal, which still stands in play, is one of the old ones. So we'd still make money on the albums, but not a lot because they say nobody's buying CDs and tapes anymore. But you still to this day get paid for the 30-year-old boys, aren't you? Yeah, we we we we would have residuals coming through, um royalties all the time. But you get that in everything. I mean, I did one show um on BBC, I think it was called Death in Paradise. And it's a murder mystery show that's shot over in Guadeloupe, a French colony in the in the Caribbean. And um I shot one episode, I I played uh uh the bass in in a band and I was the murderer. I killed the lead singer, and it's a who did it type thing. And it's it's I signed a deal, but the residuals that come in off that every year, just one episode. I gone, I wish I had done two or three of those episodes, because it's it's it's unbelievable. But then you look at Coronation Street, and I I did Coronation Street on and off for 10 years, and I still get paid from Coronation Street, I still get residuals from Coronation Street. It's it's it's not like Death and Paradise, it's not as big as that. I don't know why the difference is so big, but I still get residuals from it.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

You you've mentioned your kids a couple of times um uh while we've been having this chat, and uh obviously you you've got uh you've got Jay and Mia, and uh so how how old are they both now?

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Um Jay recently turned 28. He was born in 96, and me and my daughter, she's 24. She was born in 2000. So I was actually in the big brother house on Mia's first birthday. I did the very, very first celebrity big brother, and that was back in 2001. And Mia was won on the 11th of March, and I was locked in the house that day, and I got all the housemates, and we did it for comic relief, we weren't being paid. Louis Walsh recently did Celebrity Big Brother, and uh he's been he's been noticed to be bragging about getting paid $600,000 or £600,000 for doing it. We did it for free. Um, and it's ironic that he's doing it because I just left boys on at the time. We literally left it at the end of 1990 to 2000, and I the first thing I did was Celebrity Big Brother. Me is 24, me, me was one, and I got all the cast members to sing her happy birthday, but they didn't show it, they never put it out on air because they didn't want any favorability going on with the voting, they didn't want to give me an unfair uh advantage but by being so nice and caring. Jesus, my daughter's first birthday. They should have let me say my wife had a fight with me when I got out of the house because I didn't say happy birthday to my daughter, and I go, I wasn't in control of the editing, baby, you know. But um, yeah, me and my daughter Mia, and when she was about 18 months old, we um we kind of thought she wasn't uh responding the way Jay had, her older brother had four years previous, and we just we were a little bit concerned, we didn't know what what was quite the problem. She would do this kind of tensing thing with her arms, and she'd get very over excited, over-stimulated by the television and stuff like that. And and she was non-verbal, she wasn't really talking. So um I had no idea the problem what was going on, but it was uh we didn't talk about it enough or we uh at all because we were afraid of what we might figure out, you know what I mean. It was a very, very scary time for a young family with a daughter, and and you're thinking there might be a significant problem here, you know.

SPEAKER_00 54:07

And is that how autism works? And that um you you you don't find out pre-birth, isn't it? Yeah, like when you have all your baby tests and stuff, yeah. No, no, no, I don't this doesn't show up.

SPEAKER_02 54:16

No, no, and and diagnosis is is is imperative, okay? Early intervention is essential for the future of the child, so a diagnosis is essential as early as you can because you

Solo Risks, LA Near-Misses, And Graft

SPEAKER_02 54:30

can't access any of the services that you need if you don't have an official diagnosis. But then in Ireland at the time, there was a three and a half year waiting list through the state to have a diagnosis done. They're telling you early intervention is essential, but yet there's a three and a half year waiting list for a diagnosis. So, how can you help your child? So these are all the issues. But I didn't know what autism was, I'd never heard of autism. Um I mean I'd heard of the rain man and that and that type of thing, but that's not really a good understanding of what autism actually is. Autism it's ASD, autism spectrum disorder. And in any spectrum disorder, it means it can be very, very mild and very, very extreme. It goes infinitely on both sides. I left boys on at 26. You know, my career effectively was over at 26, and I needed to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life. And I didn't know it was going to be singing or acting or to, you know, presenting TV or radio. I didn't know. I knew I wanted to stay in the entertainment business, but I didn't know where I was where I belonged. So it was it was a tough, tough time. But I had a familiar face. So people would often ask me to do charity work to promote the charity because if you have somebody with a familiar face, they you might get a bit of press or media off the back of it. So a friend of mine rang me up and he said, a friend of his was running a charity golfing event, and I didn't play golf at the time. And he said, he just wants to know, will you turn up to the golf club and get a photograph taken on the first tee? It would really, really support this charity. And I said, Yeah, no problem. So I turned up, I met the guy who ran the charity, and we swung the club on the first tee, and all the press paparazzi were there. I hadn't been home in Dublin for years because I mean I would be, but I wouldn't be out, out and out, I wouldn't be seen there because I'd only be home to see the family and I'd be gone again. So to get the opportunity to photograph me at the time was all the journalists and all the photographers came out. So I was promoting his charity. I says, What's the charity? He says, Oh, it's school that we've put together and opened ourselves for the um education and the intervention of children with autism. I said, What's autism? And he goes, Well, my little girl has has autism, and basically it's a neurological developmental disorder that that that can affect uh you know learning difficulties. Um there's this is the whole array of different disabilities that seem to be related together through the word autism. And and I kept asking him questions because every answer he gave me, I could rail I could relate it to my daughter. So I was getting really kind of emotional now because I'm taught I'm I'm quite certain now that I've figured out what the problem is with my daughter, she has autism, and he could see I was getting a little bit emotional, so he knew I was asking the questions for a reason. So he said, Look, maybe my wife would be better to speak to than I am. So his wife came and sat down beside me and and and we spoke, and I ultimately was fighting the tears because I I knew I knew now, I was certain now my daughter had autism, and I was scared out of my mind. I didn't know what the fuck to do. I knew this was going to break my wife's heart because she wouldn't know what to do either. So I remember going home, I rang my older brother actually, and I was crying on the phone. I I left the golf course and I got into my Jeep, and I had blackout windows in the Jeep, so I wasn't gonna get into because the the the lady came out with her four kids to wave goodbye to me from the golf course, and of course I just wanted to cry, so I started crying, but it was like I say, I had black windows, and I I rang my older brother and I just said I was very emotional on the phone to my brother, he goes, Look, where are you? Where are you? I was pissing down with rain. I was on the M50, which is the ring road outside of Dublin, and and it was dangerous because the rain was putting me down and I tears coming out of my eyes. I was very upset. And he said, Look, just just just pull over, I'll be there in 20 minutes. So I pulled into the hard shoulder, and my brother turned up and he said, Look, just drive your car behind mine, I'll get you home. So he kind of drove in front of me and and we got home and he goes, Look, I'm not coming in. This is going to be a moment for you and your missus. So he said, I'll stay in the car outside, and if I don't hear from you in 15 or 20 minutes, I'll go on home. I said, Right, grand. So I walked into the house, I had red eyes, my wife could see I'd been crying. She said, Geez, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? And I just said, Look, I think Mia has autism. And she gave me a smack across the face out of complete shock. And then she hugged me, and we both cried. And that was the start of my journey. Um, I realized then that early intervention was essential, but I couldn't access it without a diagnosis. The diagnosis is a three and a half year waiting list. Um, so I'm gonna have to find something to do privately. Um, and even getting it done privately, then there's no services available in Ireland, and I found loads of other parents that were going through the same shit that nobody wanted to look after their kids, nobody wanted to maintain the appropriate intervention and the tailored education that you need for a child with autism. So we just decided to do it ourselves as parents. We got the committee together, we started the Barish Autism Action, and um I just threw myself right in to learning and educating myself on what needed to be done, and that's how I dealt with it because as as Mia got older, she never spoke. She never spoke till she was seven. So I'm not a word, no, it's not non-verbal, completely non-verbal. The first time we heard her voice, she came into the kitchen. I'll never forget it. I had a hangover again, lying on the sofa watching telly. And if she had to walk through this room to get to the kitchen there, she'd just walk by us and she and she watched Annie, the musical Annie, over and over again. She had the same movies that she'd look, and she'd watch the TV right here, and the you know the song Tomorrow from Annie, Tomorrow, tomorrow. Um, she walked through singing that song, but she'd never spoken before, so it was like she was a deaf person trying to sing. Oh, oh, like that. But it was a sound, it was a noise. We knew what she could sing, we knew the song she was trying to sing. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. We were all balling. We were so it was like it's just it was an amazing breakthrough. We had a system at home called PEC. So you remember there was no smartphones, there was no iPads, there was no tablets. So we had velcro pieces of photo fo Velcroed photographs to a chart of her bottle, her blanket, her favourite crisps, her favourite sweets. So when she wanted something, it's called the PEC system, picture exchange communication. So she'd come in and and she'd point and I go, show me on the chart, show me on the chart, and she'd she'd pull off the velcro of her milk. I say, Good girl, say milk, say milk, and this is what you have to do. And even if she just makes a stammer or or uh she mutters something, you go, good girl, very good. And you reward her, it's it's it's rewarding all the time. And then you go to the fridge, get the the milk, which you don't let her take the milk, you go, say thank you. She says, makes an effort to say thank you, and you go, you're welcome, and off she goes. Put the card back on the chart, blah blah blah. But you've got to know when to take the chart away because they know they know that they're the disability, they'll they understand it themselves, and they'll use it to their own advantage, right? So if you don't take the cards away in time, they'll get lazy with the speech. So you have to know. So the reason the the day we knew to take the chart away, she she comes in, she goes, Papa. I said, Good girl. Okay, the papa. Hand on the boat, say, say thank you. She grabbed it on my hand and went, You're welcome. And she ran off. So, you know, and she and and she we we we opened a purpose school that had tailored education for the specific need of each individual child. There was a there was part of that tailored education for me, was a thing called ABA, applied behavioral analysis. It's in a form of education, I think it was the developed and put together in Massachusetts, in the New England Centre of Massachusetts, which is a great centre for children with autism, for the education of children and young adults with autism. So we went and visited the um we went and visited the New England Centre in Massachusetts, and we we we we developed part of the ABA program in the school and as part of the education, not solely. A lot of parents of children with autism don't believe in ABA, they think it's like training an animal. I completely disagree. I can only disagree because I've seen the help that it has given me in educating my daughter. And Mia now, you know, to let you know where Mia is now, Mia is 24 now. She graduated from university two years ago, A's all honours. She's working for an American pharmaceutical company, coding on three platforms and software developing. She's got a male companion who's her friend. She passed her driving test the first time. Um she's unbelievable. She sets the bar so high for herself, and she really needs to achieve. She always wants to be peer equal or better. And uh, she talks under a bit of an American accent, but she's the most beautiful girl in the world, and she she she's my absolute heart. I love her to death. And her brother is so good with her, you know. He's four years older than her, and he's always been her best friend and that takes care of her, and and his girlfriend is very good to her, too. So I'm very, very lucky. Um, but like with the right diagnosis at the right time with the right intervention, it's it's the sky is the limit, but you've got to put the effort in. You've got to put the time and the effort in. The parents have to put the time and the effort in, not expect somebody else to do it for them. They have to do it for themselves. And if they the the more time they invest in the child, the bigger their investment will pay out later on in life for the quality of life that the child might have. You know, Mia is very content and happy. She's she's with me or she's with her mother most of the time, but she's very independent and she's very happy within herself and she's achieving her goals, which is which is the main thing. There's a show on Netflix at the moment called Love on the Spectrum, and it's it's every single kid is completely different, but there's so many similarities to having a child with autism in the house, and it's amazing to see these families all over America living so similarly to how we live with our daughter, and you just realise you're not on your own, and there's a million families experiencing the same things, you know. High perform people, high-performing uh autism children or young adults, they want to be loved, they want to be in a relationship, you know, they want all the things that we want for ourselves, you know. And I experienced that with my daughter Mia, but looking at love on the spectrum, I could see there's so many little boys and girls like me out there that all want

Fatherhood, Autism Discovery, And Action

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

the same thing and and they suffer with the same anxieties, they suffer from the same stresses and and upsets, and and really it's just if the rest of the world was to educate themselves a little bit more on autism and and you know, understand they're trying to live in our environment, whereas we should try and live in theirs for a while, and it just it would make the world a much much better place.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

Well, listen, buddy, it's been an absolute pleasure talking. Uh, I mean, like I said at the beginning, we could make three episodes, we could probably make 33 episodes out of this. So I hope we're getting to do a round two again sometime soon. Certainly it's certainly go deeper on the autism story because I know I know you've got pl plenty to talk about and how you how you've been raising money and uh and and all all the all the different philanthropic events you've done done over the years. So thanks a lot for being here, mate. And thanks for having me, Matt. It's been a great pleasure. Cheers.