Post by Helen on Sept 26, 2004 16:14:38 GMT
www.timesonline.co.uk
Body & Soul
Interview: Ronan Keating: Packing a punch
Although he likes a chat with God, pop star Ronan Keating tells Amber Cowan he’s no saint
Squinting into the afternoon sun, pop’s “golden boy” Ronan Keating is bleary-eyed. He has been up since dawn doing interviews to promote his new single, I Hope You Dance. And he is suffering from a recurring, mystery eye infection that Optrex won’t fix, hiding his bloodshot peepers behind smoked-glass shades.
There was a time when the ex-Boyzoner would put looking rough down to hard living, but now, more than ever, Keating is aware of the dangers of “burning the candle at both ends”. In July he hit the headlines when a boil on his face spread out of control and he was taken to hospital after collapsing in Portugal. The infection was caused by the everyday staphylococcus bacteria, which is carried on the skin and under the nails, getting into a broken pore and causing his cheek to inflame to the size of a tennis ball. “I looked like the Elephant Man,” he shudders. “It was terrifying. I became really sick and because my immune system was so run down, my body couldn’t fight it.”
While in hospital, his face grew so disfigured that he temporarily lost his sight and even his 5-year-old son Jack didn’t recognise him. It was four days before doctors managed to diagnose the condition correctly and another six before the antibiotics kicked in and he was allowed home. “It was just awful,” he says. “Lying in a hospital bed with people bringing me food in, I couldn’t deal with that. That messed my head up more than anything else.”
Since his recovery, Keating has been determined to take better care of himself, and has taken echinacea in the hope of boosting his immune system. He blames the virus’s virulence on an earlier bout of food poisoning. “I had a bit of a tummy upset six weeks before. It was just bad luck that the two things happened within weeks of each other. But it was the first time that I really felt old.”
At 27, Keating isn’t old, of course, although he has already crammed more into his years than most others have in a lifetime. He was just 17 when he landed the gig with Boyzone: the ruthlessly efficient pop machine that notched up 15 top five singles, including seven No 1s, and sold 15 million albums worldwide. Since going solo in 1999 he has co-written three almost-as-successful solo albums, unleashed on the world Westlife, the group he co-manages, and simultaneously managed to balance the demands of a young family with carving out a reputation as a pearly-toothed one-man advert for the Irish Tourist Board.
Like most 27-year-olds, he likes a drink and, after the clean-living Boyzone years, is happy to talk up his normality. “I love chocolate and I love Jack Daniel’s — in any order,” he says. “I like going out with my mates and having a pint down my local. I like having a good time.”
Earlier this year, though, “having a good time” resulted in him getting into a couple of boozy, if unlikely, fights: one on his birthday in an Irish pub in New York, and another in a chip shop in Dublin when he squared up to a customer who was teasing him by singing his single, Life is a Rollercoaster.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but once in a while someone with a bit of drink on them will start mouthing off,” he says. “Most of the time it’s not worth bothering about, but every now and again you think, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m not having that’. I don’t think I’m any different from the next man in that sense.”
While the publicity hasn’t done his current “biker” image any harm — today he is dressed in a distressed T-shirt and leather boots — in the light of his recent health scare and the doctor’s warning to take it easy, has he thought about cutting down on the late nights and the liquor? “I didn’t drink for about two weeks after I came out of hospital and I felt great,” he says. “But I like to drink. I couldn’t just stop that. And anyway, I’m not a heavy drinker.”
Keating married Yvonne, a model, in 1998, and the couple have two children: Jack and Marie, 3. A virgin until he tied the knot — he famously claimed: “I plan to wait until I meet the right person. I come from a good Catholic family and was brought up with high moral standards” — he regularly flies his family out to visit while he is on tour, and says that it’s his marriage rather than vanity that makes him keep a check on his looks. “I ’ll always try to look my best for my wife,” he says. “People get married and put on weight because they don’t care. But I don’t want to look at myself in ten years’ time and I’m all fat with a big belly and ten chins.”
As a lifelong fitness freak — at school he briefly held the Irish title for the 200 metres in running — he works out at least three times a week in his home gym: “I run for 45 minutes on the treadmill, then train for an hour-and-a-half with weights. I do it to have a healthy head. It’s hard to go to the gym, but afterwards you think, ‘I’m glad I did that’.”
Although he says that he has never considered alternative medicine or therapies, he is toying with the idea of taking up yoga. “I’d like to get my body and mind more focused. It seems to be very relaxing and so many people recommend it, there must be something there.” While some people claim to draw spiritual strength from yoga, Keating’s belief is more conventional:
his Catholic upbringing. His conversation is punctuated with the expressions “please God ”, “God bless”, and occasionally, a less dignified “holy f***”. Last year he flew to the Vatican to sing for the Pope, he is an ambassador for Christian Aid, and has been bringing up his children to believe in God. “I look for guidance in Christ all the time. I wouldn’t force my views on anyone, but I want my children to believe. If they don’t, that’s their choice. But I think they will.”
The sex scandals surrounding the Catholic Church in Ireland mean that Keating no longer attends Sunday Mass, but he has several friends in the priesthood and isn’t averse to dropping by an empty chapel for a bit of quiet contemplation. “I will go to a church and speak to God, but I won’t go to confession,” he says. “I believe Christ judges me and I will tell Him my sins, but not a priest.”
It was his faith that helped Keating to deal with the trauma of losing his mother, Marie, to breast cancer in 1998. He says that he believes in life after death — “I think our spirits go to another place” — and feels that she has stayed with him as a guiding and protective force. This gave him the strength to undertake a three-week walk the length of Ireland in the spring, which raised €150,000 (£100,000) for the Marie Keating Foundation, the breast cancer charity he set up in her memory. “It was a mad idea but it worked,” he says. “The experience was incredible. After the first week, I had really bad pains in my shins and the blisters on my feet were unbelievable. But I spoke to Mum a lot on the road and she kept me going,for sure.”
His new single, a cover of the song I Hope You Dance by the country singer Lee Ann Womack, is a charity record in aid of the Marie Keating Foundation in Ireland, with all proceeds from UK sales in Asda stores going towards th store’s Tickled Pink campaign for Breast Cancer Care. “I don’t know if I care more about this than about anything else I’ve done,” he reflects. “But I really hope that people will buy it to support the charity as much as because they like the song.”
I Hope You Dance is quintessential Keating: the sort of rain-lashed ballad you can imagine would sound best blasting from the top of a dramaticprecipice. It is also a primer for a greatest hits album, Ten Years of Hits,released next month. “Best Of” compilations can often feel like a final fling with an ex — so given that he has recently expressed a desire to move into acting, is this Keating bowing out? “People keep asking me if I’ m breaking up with myself,” he says. “But I want to take a year off next year to make the right album for the fans. The sound isn’t going to change: itwon’t be an indie album or a rock album or anything like that.” He adds,philosophically: “I am what I am, and I’m going to continue with that.”
A late lunch beckons and he heads indoors to devour a plate ofhealth-conscious salad. Life may be a rollercoaster, but, bar the odd JD and Coke, he’s not going off the rails yet.
Body & Soul
Interview: Ronan Keating: Packing a punch
Although he likes a chat with God, pop star Ronan Keating tells Amber Cowan he’s no saint
Squinting into the afternoon sun, pop’s “golden boy” Ronan Keating is bleary-eyed. He has been up since dawn doing interviews to promote his new single, I Hope You Dance. And he is suffering from a recurring, mystery eye infection that Optrex won’t fix, hiding his bloodshot peepers behind smoked-glass shades.
There was a time when the ex-Boyzoner would put looking rough down to hard living, but now, more than ever, Keating is aware of the dangers of “burning the candle at both ends”. In July he hit the headlines when a boil on his face spread out of control and he was taken to hospital after collapsing in Portugal. The infection was caused by the everyday staphylococcus bacteria, which is carried on the skin and under the nails, getting into a broken pore and causing his cheek to inflame to the size of a tennis ball. “I looked like the Elephant Man,” he shudders. “It was terrifying. I became really sick and because my immune system was so run down, my body couldn’t fight it.”
While in hospital, his face grew so disfigured that he temporarily lost his sight and even his 5-year-old son Jack didn’t recognise him. It was four days before doctors managed to diagnose the condition correctly and another six before the antibiotics kicked in and he was allowed home. “It was just awful,” he says. “Lying in a hospital bed with people bringing me food in, I couldn’t deal with that. That messed my head up more than anything else.”
Since his recovery, Keating has been determined to take better care of himself, and has taken echinacea in the hope of boosting his immune system. He blames the virus’s virulence on an earlier bout of food poisoning. “I had a bit of a tummy upset six weeks before. It was just bad luck that the two things happened within weeks of each other. But it was the first time that I really felt old.”
At 27, Keating isn’t old, of course, although he has already crammed more into his years than most others have in a lifetime. He was just 17 when he landed the gig with Boyzone: the ruthlessly efficient pop machine that notched up 15 top five singles, including seven No 1s, and sold 15 million albums worldwide. Since going solo in 1999 he has co-written three almost-as-successful solo albums, unleashed on the world Westlife, the group he co-manages, and simultaneously managed to balance the demands of a young family with carving out a reputation as a pearly-toothed one-man advert for the Irish Tourist Board.
Like most 27-year-olds, he likes a drink and, after the clean-living Boyzone years, is happy to talk up his normality. “I love chocolate and I love Jack Daniel’s — in any order,” he says. “I like going out with my mates and having a pint down my local. I like having a good time.”
Earlier this year, though, “having a good time” resulted in him getting into a couple of boozy, if unlikely, fights: one on his birthday in an Irish pub in New York, and another in a chip shop in Dublin when he squared up to a customer who was teasing him by singing his single, Life is a Rollercoaster.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but once in a while someone with a bit of drink on them will start mouthing off,” he says. “Most of the time it’s not worth bothering about, but every now and again you think, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m not having that’. I don’t think I’m any different from the next man in that sense.”
While the publicity hasn’t done his current “biker” image any harm — today he is dressed in a distressed T-shirt and leather boots — in the light of his recent health scare and the doctor’s warning to take it easy, has he thought about cutting down on the late nights and the liquor? “I didn’t drink for about two weeks after I came out of hospital and I felt great,” he says. “But I like to drink. I couldn’t just stop that. And anyway, I’m not a heavy drinker.”
Keating married Yvonne, a model, in 1998, and the couple have two children: Jack and Marie, 3. A virgin until he tied the knot — he famously claimed: “I plan to wait until I meet the right person. I come from a good Catholic family and was brought up with high moral standards” — he regularly flies his family out to visit while he is on tour, and says that it’s his marriage rather than vanity that makes him keep a check on his looks. “I ’ll always try to look my best for my wife,” he says. “People get married and put on weight because they don’t care. But I don’t want to look at myself in ten years’ time and I’m all fat with a big belly and ten chins.”
As a lifelong fitness freak — at school he briefly held the Irish title for the 200 metres in running — he works out at least three times a week in his home gym: “I run for 45 minutes on the treadmill, then train for an hour-and-a-half with weights. I do it to have a healthy head. It’s hard to go to the gym, but afterwards you think, ‘I’m glad I did that’.”
Although he says that he has never considered alternative medicine or therapies, he is toying with the idea of taking up yoga. “I’d like to get my body and mind more focused. It seems to be very relaxing and so many people recommend it, there must be something there.” While some people claim to draw spiritual strength from yoga, Keating’s belief is more conventional:
his Catholic upbringing. His conversation is punctuated with the expressions “please God ”, “God bless”, and occasionally, a less dignified “holy f***”. Last year he flew to the Vatican to sing for the Pope, he is an ambassador for Christian Aid, and has been bringing up his children to believe in God. “I look for guidance in Christ all the time. I wouldn’t force my views on anyone, but I want my children to believe. If they don’t, that’s their choice. But I think they will.”
The sex scandals surrounding the Catholic Church in Ireland mean that Keating no longer attends Sunday Mass, but he has several friends in the priesthood and isn’t averse to dropping by an empty chapel for a bit of quiet contemplation. “I will go to a church and speak to God, but I won’t go to confession,” he says. “I believe Christ judges me and I will tell Him my sins, but not a priest.”
It was his faith that helped Keating to deal with the trauma of losing his mother, Marie, to breast cancer in 1998. He says that he believes in life after death — “I think our spirits go to another place” — and feels that she has stayed with him as a guiding and protective force. This gave him the strength to undertake a three-week walk the length of Ireland in the spring, which raised €150,000 (£100,000) for the Marie Keating Foundation, the breast cancer charity he set up in her memory. “It was a mad idea but it worked,” he says. “The experience was incredible. After the first week, I had really bad pains in my shins and the blisters on my feet were unbelievable. But I spoke to Mum a lot on the road and she kept me going,for sure.”
His new single, a cover of the song I Hope You Dance by the country singer Lee Ann Womack, is a charity record in aid of the Marie Keating Foundation in Ireland, with all proceeds from UK sales in Asda stores going towards th store’s Tickled Pink campaign for Breast Cancer Care. “I don’t know if I care more about this than about anything else I’ve done,” he reflects. “But I really hope that people will buy it to support the charity as much as because they like the song.”
I Hope You Dance is quintessential Keating: the sort of rain-lashed ballad you can imagine would sound best blasting from the top of a dramaticprecipice. It is also a primer for a greatest hits album, Ten Years of Hits,released next month. “Best Of” compilations can often feel like a final fling with an ex — so given that he has recently expressed a desire to move into acting, is this Keating bowing out? “People keep asking me if I’ m breaking up with myself,” he says. “But I want to take a year off next year to make the right album for the fans. The sound isn’t going to change: itwon’t be an indie album or a rock album or anything like that.” He adds,philosophically: “I am what I am, and I’m going to continue with that.”
A late lunch beckons and he heads indoors to devour a plate ofhealth-conscious salad. Life may be a rollercoaster, but, bar the odd JD and Coke, he’s not going off the rails yet.
