Post by Helen on Aug 8, 2005 19:21:13 GMT
Mummy's boy
Ronan Keating remembers his mother
John-Paul Flintoff is an award-winning journalist and author
www.flintoff.org/article/180/mummys-boy
Like many men with young children, Ronan Keating will spend Mother’s Day pampering his wife on the children’s behalf. This year Yvonne deserves that more than ever, he says, because she’s pregnant again. “We’re due in September – please God.”
Naturally, he would also do something for his own mother if she were alive. But since she died, seven years ago, the Irish popstar and avowed Christian has been restricted to honouring her memory – which he does by promoting awareness of the disease that killed her.
With his brothers and sister he established a cancer charity, the Marie Keating Foundation. “If there’d been something like that before then maybe our mam would still be alive today. Cancer, if it’s caught in time, can be treated.” In 2003, he raised money by walking from the northern tip of Ireland to the furthest point south: he took three weeks to cover 400 miles, winning enormous media coverage, raising Euros 160,000, and creating immense pain in his feet and shins. This week the 28-year-old announced that he’s doing it again.
Even after seven years, he’s obviously still choked by his mother’s death. “She found out in 1996. We all knew she had a lump but the important thing was whether it was benign or not. I was on the road when my brother called to say it was cancer. I didn’t know what that meant, only that it was bad. But I blocked it out. You don’t believe anything can happen to your parents.
“She went through the treatment. Because of the chemotherapy she lost her hair, which for a hairdresser was very hard. People talk about someone being house-proud, well my mother was hair-proud. But she was very positive. She went to New York and got some really good wigs.
“In the summer of 1997 she got the all clear. It was fantastic, we were all very relieved. But soon afterwards she started to feel pain in her back. The doctors said at first that was a result of the chemo, but we later found out the cancer had spread to the spine. The doctors called us in and said it was very serious. We asked if she could come home for Christmas, and she did. But she was in a wheelchair and very weak, too weak to buy us presents, and that really upset her.” She died a month later. Ronan was devastated – as were they all, not least his father Gerard, a trucker.
As Marie’s youngest child, Ronan was particularly close to her. His siblings – aged between five and 12 years older than him – all left home when he was young so for years he was the only child in the house. She passed on to him old-fashioned values for which he’s almost as well known as his old-fashioned music (his songs, heavily reliant on harmony, sound familiar even if you’ve never heard them before: close your eyes and you could almost be listening to early Motown). And he’s rejoiced in a reputation for rectitude ever since he announced, early on, that he intended to remain a virgin until he had found the right woman and married her.
With militant Christianity sweeping through public life – against televised opera (Jerry Springer) and royal second-marriages alike, it’s tempting to suggest that Keating’s values should no longer be regarded as unfashionable. But in truth they remain unusual, certainly in rock and pop.
When Keating was 16, he worked in a shoe shop. He wasn’t a bad salesman, he believes, if a little too honest. (“They say shoes will stretch! That’s bollocks.”) Despite the unpleasantness of handling other people’s sweaty feet, he found the job useful. “I learned how to deal with people,” he recalls. “School doesn’t teach you that. And anyway it was the manager at the shop who saw the ad about the auditions for a band and told me to go for it.”
As a member of Boyzone, the first band since the Beatles to reach number one with its first four albums, Keating became wildly successful. He has said it was “hard not to be consumed by the glitzy side of the business”, but seems to have succumbed only by purchasing vulgar clothes. (“Jumpers with the hugest D&G logo on the front… Oh, the shame.”) After the band split, he enjoyed similar success as a solo artist and co-managed the next great Irish crooning phenomenon, Westlife. He regrets that his mother missed most of this. “But she did see a good part of Boyzone. She loved the lads and they all spoke well of her. The band would leave in the bus from my house and me ma would make sausage sandwiches for us all, wrapped up in foil.”
She also contributed enthusiasm. “I don’t come from a particularly musical family but Ireland is a musical country. She used to sing a lot, songs like Amazing Grace. I loved music too, I would run home from school and listen to my brother’s records… Queen, Culture Club, Squeeze, Cat Stevens, all sorts. Sometimes my brother and I would have singing contests and she had to listen. Afterwards she’d say, ‘Both of yous are good.’
“What she gave me is a sense of decency and honesty, and good manners that I’ve tried to instil in my own children.” Is that unusual? “I think it is. I don’t want to sound like an old fart but all that’s been lost. Look in the papers, you have this kid calling Roy Keane a name and it even goes to court. That just didn’t happen before.”
Glen Matlock, formerly of the Sex Pistols, whose own youthful discourse was punctuated with expletives, likewise complained this week about the prevalence of swearing on TV. I mention this to Keating, who looks hazy about Matlock’s name but agrees with the general thrust. “I think that’s right. There is too much. It seems to be more acceptable these days for kids to swear or talk back. In the US, they’re shooting each other in schools and it’s only a matter of time before that happens here.
“Look, I do know what’s going on in the world. I’m part of Make Poverty History and I went to Ghana with Christian Aid to see the effects of international trade, but I do think that kids need to be reined back. They’re given too much, too soon. I don’t spend hundreds of thousands on my children, I don’t call Disneyworld and ask them to close for the day so we can make a private visit. I have great opportunities but I don’t spoil my children. I used to bring home presents whenever I went away. But then they didn’t appreciate presents at Christmas and on their birthdays, so I stopped.”
His religious views are surprisingly unorthodox. On the one hand he says he’s “a good Catholic”, mentions an audience with the Pope last year and says he was “really in awe” to meet his spiritual leader. (“I wish my mother could have come along with me because she went to mass every day.”) But on the other hand he says the church in Ireland has “fallen to nuts”. “There is a huge problem with paedophile priests. I never had that problem myself but I used to fear the priests and I resent that. I pray every night but I don’t need to talk to a priest.” Apart from the early-Matlockian turn of phrase, even fanatical Protestants would find little to fault in this analysis.
It’s been reported in the past that Keating favours abortion. “No. I’ve never said that I’m with abortion or against it. I don’t believe in killing a child, that’s for sure. We had a scan yesterday, and the most beautiful little child is in my wife’s tummy. How anyone could kill that I just don’t understand. But I do believe that if there was a problem…” He abandons that sentence, starts a new one. “I don’t like the fact that the church would condemn you and turn its back on you even if your own life was at risk. What sort of church is that? That is not a church of God. But who am I to talk about abortion? I’m a man, and it’s women who go through it.”
On balance, it would be wrong to regard Keating as a militant Christian. He does, perhaps inevitably, sound like an old fart when he complains about kids today. But mostly he speaks with the earnest enthusiasm of youth.
“I’m in great shape,” he asserts, bringing the subject back to his next long walk. “After the last one I felt better than ever. I had pasta and boiled chicken for three weeks, and nothing to drink but juice and water.” But the blisters? The mysterious pain in his shins…? “When you walk,” he says, “you go like this.” He lifts and drops his toes like a drummer beating time, and in just the tone he might have used if the musical career had never happened – if he were 16, living at home with his mam and still working in that shoe shop – he explains: “The shin bone is rubbing and you get splinters in the muscle. I had to put half my leg into a bucket of ice every day.” Is he worried that the same might happen again? No, because he’s changed his shoes. “Instead of a soft trainer,” he says brightly, “I’m going for a solid
sole.”
1585 words. First published 6 March 05. © The Sunday Times
Ronan Keating remembers his mother
John-Paul Flintoff is an award-winning journalist and author
www.flintoff.org/article/180/mummys-boy
Like many men with young children, Ronan Keating will spend Mother’s Day pampering his wife on the children’s behalf. This year Yvonne deserves that more than ever, he says, because she’s pregnant again. “We’re due in September – please God.”
Naturally, he would also do something for his own mother if she were alive. But since she died, seven years ago, the Irish popstar and avowed Christian has been restricted to honouring her memory – which he does by promoting awareness of the disease that killed her.
With his brothers and sister he established a cancer charity, the Marie Keating Foundation. “If there’d been something like that before then maybe our mam would still be alive today. Cancer, if it’s caught in time, can be treated.” In 2003, he raised money by walking from the northern tip of Ireland to the furthest point south: he took three weeks to cover 400 miles, winning enormous media coverage, raising Euros 160,000, and creating immense pain in his feet and shins. This week the 28-year-old announced that he’s doing it again.
Even after seven years, he’s obviously still choked by his mother’s death. “She found out in 1996. We all knew she had a lump but the important thing was whether it was benign or not. I was on the road when my brother called to say it was cancer. I didn’t know what that meant, only that it was bad. But I blocked it out. You don’t believe anything can happen to your parents.
“She went through the treatment. Because of the chemotherapy she lost her hair, which for a hairdresser was very hard. People talk about someone being house-proud, well my mother was hair-proud. But she was very positive. She went to New York and got some really good wigs.
“In the summer of 1997 she got the all clear. It was fantastic, we were all very relieved. But soon afterwards she started to feel pain in her back. The doctors said at first that was a result of the chemo, but we later found out the cancer had spread to the spine. The doctors called us in and said it was very serious. We asked if she could come home for Christmas, and she did. But she was in a wheelchair and very weak, too weak to buy us presents, and that really upset her.” She died a month later. Ronan was devastated – as were they all, not least his father Gerard, a trucker.
As Marie’s youngest child, Ronan was particularly close to her. His siblings – aged between five and 12 years older than him – all left home when he was young so for years he was the only child in the house. She passed on to him old-fashioned values for which he’s almost as well known as his old-fashioned music (his songs, heavily reliant on harmony, sound familiar even if you’ve never heard them before: close your eyes and you could almost be listening to early Motown). And he’s rejoiced in a reputation for rectitude ever since he announced, early on, that he intended to remain a virgin until he had found the right woman and married her.
With militant Christianity sweeping through public life – against televised opera (Jerry Springer) and royal second-marriages alike, it’s tempting to suggest that Keating’s values should no longer be regarded as unfashionable. But in truth they remain unusual, certainly in rock and pop.
When Keating was 16, he worked in a shoe shop. He wasn’t a bad salesman, he believes, if a little too honest. (“They say shoes will stretch! That’s bollocks.”) Despite the unpleasantness of handling other people’s sweaty feet, he found the job useful. “I learned how to deal with people,” he recalls. “School doesn’t teach you that. And anyway it was the manager at the shop who saw the ad about the auditions for a band and told me to go for it.”
As a member of Boyzone, the first band since the Beatles to reach number one with its first four albums, Keating became wildly successful. He has said it was “hard not to be consumed by the glitzy side of the business”, but seems to have succumbed only by purchasing vulgar clothes. (“Jumpers with the hugest D&G logo on the front… Oh, the shame.”) After the band split, he enjoyed similar success as a solo artist and co-managed the next great Irish crooning phenomenon, Westlife. He regrets that his mother missed most of this. “But she did see a good part of Boyzone. She loved the lads and they all spoke well of her. The band would leave in the bus from my house and me ma would make sausage sandwiches for us all, wrapped up in foil.”
She also contributed enthusiasm. “I don’t come from a particularly musical family but Ireland is a musical country. She used to sing a lot, songs like Amazing Grace. I loved music too, I would run home from school and listen to my brother’s records… Queen, Culture Club, Squeeze, Cat Stevens, all sorts. Sometimes my brother and I would have singing contests and she had to listen. Afterwards she’d say, ‘Both of yous are good.’
“What she gave me is a sense of decency and honesty, and good manners that I’ve tried to instil in my own children.” Is that unusual? “I think it is. I don’t want to sound like an old fart but all that’s been lost. Look in the papers, you have this kid calling Roy Keane a name and it even goes to court. That just didn’t happen before.”
Glen Matlock, formerly of the Sex Pistols, whose own youthful discourse was punctuated with expletives, likewise complained this week about the prevalence of swearing on TV. I mention this to Keating, who looks hazy about Matlock’s name but agrees with the general thrust. “I think that’s right. There is too much. It seems to be more acceptable these days for kids to swear or talk back. In the US, they’re shooting each other in schools and it’s only a matter of time before that happens here.
“Look, I do know what’s going on in the world. I’m part of Make Poverty History and I went to Ghana with Christian Aid to see the effects of international trade, but I do think that kids need to be reined back. They’re given too much, too soon. I don’t spend hundreds of thousands on my children, I don’t call Disneyworld and ask them to close for the day so we can make a private visit. I have great opportunities but I don’t spoil my children. I used to bring home presents whenever I went away. But then they didn’t appreciate presents at Christmas and on their birthdays, so I stopped.”
His religious views are surprisingly unorthodox. On the one hand he says he’s “a good Catholic”, mentions an audience with the Pope last year and says he was “really in awe” to meet his spiritual leader. (“I wish my mother could have come along with me because she went to mass every day.”) But on the other hand he says the church in Ireland has “fallen to nuts”. “There is a huge problem with paedophile priests. I never had that problem myself but I used to fear the priests and I resent that. I pray every night but I don’t need to talk to a priest.” Apart from the early-Matlockian turn of phrase, even fanatical Protestants would find little to fault in this analysis.
It’s been reported in the past that Keating favours abortion. “No. I’ve never said that I’m with abortion or against it. I don’t believe in killing a child, that’s for sure. We had a scan yesterday, and the most beautiful little child is in my wife’s tummy. How anyone could kill that I just don’t understand. But I do believe that if there was a problem…” He abandons that sentence, starts a new one. “I don’t like the fact that the church would condemn you and turn its back on you even if your own life was at risk. What sort of church is that? That is not a church of God. But who am I to talk about abortion? I’m a man, and it’s women who go through it.”
On balance, it would be wrong to regard Keating as a militant Christian. He does, perhaps inevitably, sound like an old fart when he complains about kids today. But mostly he speaks with the earnest enthusiasm of youth.
“I’m in great shape,” he asserts, bringing the subject back to his next long walk. “After the last one I felt better than ever. I had pasta and boiled chicken for three weeks, and nothing to drink but juice and water.” But the blisters? The mysterious pain in his shins…? “When you walk,” he says, “you go like this.” He lifts and drops his toes like a drummer beating time, and in just the tone he might have used if the musical career had never happened – if he were 16, living at home with his mam and still working in that shoe shop – he explains: “The shin bone is rubbing and you get splinters in the muscle. I had to put half my leg into a bucket of ice every day.” Is he worried that the same might happen again? No, because he’s changed his shoes. “Instead of a soft trainer,” he says brightly, “I’m going for a solid
sole.”
1585 words. First published 6 March 05. © The Sunday Times
