"I’m not your Superman,” pipes Ronan Keating on Bring You Home, his latest solo release. But sitting with him and wife Yvonne backstage at The Late Late Show – both livelier company than people that pretty have any right to be – one might be forgiven for imagining the couple to be part of some great Nietzschean experiment.
By any measure, Mr. Keating has always seemed smarter than the average boy band conscript. When he sits down with Pat Kenny he rattles off the same polished answers he’s given me some hours previously at the Berkeley Court Hotel. With anyone else, it might look contrived. With Ronan, it’s different. He simply knows exactly what he wants to say and he’s lived long enough in the public glare to realise that semantic ambiguity can only generate unfortunate tabloid headlines.
When somebody mentions the misfortunes of Heather Mc Cartney-Mills in the RTE green room, he responds with characteristic kindness.
He feels desperately sorry for her, he says. The man is a legend, but everyone has been telling him so for decades. That can’t be easy to live with.
Yep, Ronan is a nice guy. The same twisted people who disseminated those patently ludicrous stories about Brian Kennedy would probably admit as much. The post boy-band world may be littered with tawdry tales and casualties, but Mr. Keating seems to have breezed through, avoiding all the usual pitfalls. He married a girl he has known since he was 13. He plays doting father to three beautiful kids. He does good works through the cancer charity founded in memory of his mother, Marie, and as part of his remit for the UN. He’s not just publicising his ass either. He speaks passionately about travelling to Ghana as part of the campaign for fair trade and seems genuinely thrilled by the recent downturn in figures for breast cancer.
Despite constant speculation over the breakdown in relations with his former manager, he even manages to make nice about Louis Walsh.
“There was a slight falling out with Louis,” Ronan admits. “He slated me in the press and then all of a sudden he said we had made up. He did it because he reckoned I sacked him. I am not going to get in a slagging match with him. I have total respect for Louis but we became different people and basically he was focusing on the wrong things. He had 30 bands to look after but I only have one chance so I have to concentrate on my own career. The truth is, we haven’t seen each other in three years, so there’s no rows or making up or anything else to report. I wish him well and I hope he feels the same.”
So what’s the deal with recent headlines claiming Ronan as a hell-raiser? I’d hitherto never have mistaken him for one of the Allman brothers.
“I’m probably not a hell-raiser by Hot Press standards,” he grins. “I’m not Ozzy or Robbie or any of those guys. I just make records and I do my thing.
"I shaved my head and I got a couple of tattoos and people thought I was trying to change my image but that was just media stuff. But I’m not the angelic good boy I sometimes read about, you know? I’m just a normal bloke. I go down to the pub and have a few pints with my mates and I go down the chipper. Not very rock, but it’s not different to how most blokes live. I’m happy enough to be domesticated. Although, before I did this album, I remember taking out the bins in the rain and thinking to myself – I got to get back on the road.”
Ronan Keating grew up in Bayside, a couple of streets over from my house. Neighbours still recall the sunny, supremely confident little kid who was never afraid to give lip to Bigger Boys should the occasion demand it.
Few were surprised when at 16, he was snapped up to front Boyzone.
Despite a heinous start, the band would shift millions of units and provide wallpaper images for teenaged girls all over Europe.
“It’s weird being back on The Late Late Show,” he says. “I always feel a bit guilty when I’m here. Guilty for Gay Byrne specifically. There are people in the UK who have only seen him in clip shows – the bit with Bono and Larry giving him the Harley Davidson and the bit with us looking like total muppets.”
He laughs.
“Actually, I’ve tried to buy that footage, but I reckon they make too much from it because they won’t part with it.”
Hardly a pop puppet, Ronan would briefly co-manage Westlife before embarking on a solo career, clocking up three number one albums in the process. All seemed peachy until Turn It On, his 2003 release, failed to crack the UK top 20.
“I tripped up a bit on the last studio album”, he smiles apologetically. “It’s my fault. I got a bit too big for my boots. I kind of thought I was bullet proof. I thought I could record any track. I thought I could be Bono or Jon Bon Jovi. But I quickly learned you can’t do that. I’ve learned what my strengths and weaknesses are. I spent a year and a half making Bring You Home. It’s very ballad driven. That’s what the fans want – I hope so, anyway – and I’m very happy with it.”
Lapsed Ronan worshippers will surely be mollified by Bring You Home’s pleasingly mellow collection of smoochy new tracks and covers, including renditions of Neil Diamond’s ‘Hello Again’ and The Golden Horde’s ‘Friends In Time’. There is, however, a career safety net if Take That’s recent sell-out tour is anything to go by.
“I know, I know,” he nods. “I went to Take That last Friday night and I had forgotten how loud those screams were. For the first 10 minutes I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great to get the band together. But I would be afraid it wouldn’t be a success and there would be terrible egg on your face. It would have to be a greatest hits tour. We couldn’t get back in the studio. I mean we get on well. Everything is cool between us. But I don’t know if we would be able for it and I’ve worked really hard to build a solo audience. I can go on an arena tour now. It would feel like a backwards step.”
We’re leaving RTE when I ask Yvonne the most important question of the evening. With Ronan packing arenas around the planet, will she have to face the bins in the rain by herself?
“Oh no,” she laughs. “This is really embarrassing but I usually have to get Ronan’s dad over. I always forget the tags and the right day.”
Well, almost Nietzschean.