Lads on each other

Westlife on Kian

Mark on Kian
Kian’s the serious one. He’s always on the phone sorting out our business deals.
He’s very protective of us all, too. A couple of times we’ve been out the night before a big TV show and had a few drinks and it’s got back to the management. Kian will really defend us. He also covers if we’re late for appointments.
Kian is the biggest shopper in the band. He’ll pay £2,000 for a pair of trousers. I could never do that. He went mad in Beverly Hills recently and came back to the hotel with loads of shopping bags. He bought three or four jackets, costing £1,000 each.
I’m sure Kian will be a manager. In a really short period he’s learnt an awful lot about the music world. He can be very businesslike, but when we were touring America for two and a half months he got stressed out like the rest of us.
We were travelling every single day and it became so repetitive. Even though we were getting to see America and performing in front of thousands of people it really got to him. He was very down and simply couldn’t wait to get home, like all of us.

Nicky on Kian
Kian is the most serious in the band and the most passionate about what we do. He always seems to have a point to make. He’s thinking about Westlife all the time, but the other side of it is that he has a fiery temper. He’ll lose his head and start swearing, and then we all swear. Spend an hour with us and a swear box and you’ll be rich!
I remember one occasion and we’d been at a party all night. We’d literally had 20 minutes sleep and we got on a plane from East Germany to Amsterdam. Everyone was conked out on the flight, but our tour manager woke up and took Kian’s watch from his wrist without him noticing.
When Kian got off the plane he realised it had gone and because he’d been drunk he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen it. He’d spent £2,500 on it and it wasn’t insured. He was just about to bawl his eyes out when the tour manager gave it back to him.
If that was me I would have been so relieved that I would have given him a hug, but Kian was the opposite and was really annoyed. He freaked out and started shouting at him: “Don’t you ever do that to me again”. He’ll look back on it now and think it was hilarious, but he wasn’t happy at the time!

Shane on Kian
Kian can be quite emotional. I remember him breaking up with this girl when he was 16 and he got quite upset. They’d been together for a year and she broke it off because she thought it wasn’t working, but he wasn’t expecting it, so he was in tears. I did my best to help him, I took him out to disco's to take his mind off it.
He’s single at the moment – with a girl in every port – but he really fancies Britney Spears. He fancies a lot of people, but Britney is definitely top of the list.
He can be pretty romantic – good at getting the roses and going out for dinner and all that kind of stuff. He’s a real schmoozer, he knows what he’s doing.
Kian knows all our weak spots and when we’re giving each other stick. He knows how to wind us up. It can be real below the belt stuff.
I’m not very good at understanding jokes, so sometimes I laugh to go along with it, but he picks up on it. He’ll say: “What about that, Filan, do you get that one?” and if I say yes he makes me explain it to everyone and of course I can’t.
Kian is very easy to talk to and he works extremely hard. When everyone’s tired he’s the one who gets us up in the morning and gees us all up.

Westlife on Mark

Kian on Mark
Mark is very shy and reserved and quite a private person. He likes his privacy more than anyone else in the band. As a result I’ve never really seen him down. He doesn’t show his feelings to us and he’ll go to his room and ring his mum rather than talk to us. He just likes to keep a little bit of distance when it comes to personal things.
We spend a lot of time together and at some point I’ve seen all the other guys in tears, but never Mark, not even behind closed doors.
His grandfather died when he was in America and even then he didn’t show us much of his feelings. He just wanted to go and ring his mum and talk to her and his friends back home. He likes to keep that side of his life to himself. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s just his personality and we respect that 100 per cent.
Despite being shy, Mark is actually one of the funniest in the band and he loves to party more than any of us. He’s always up for a night out, going out to clubs and meeting girls. He doesn’t want to be tied down, he reckons he’s too young.

Nicky on Mark
Mark is the deceptive one. When I first met him he wouldn’t say boo to a goose and he wouldn’t open his heart out to any of us, but when you get to know him you discover the boy is really mad!
Sometimes we have to do a day of solid interviews from nine in the morning to nine at night and he’ll just get so fed up answering the same questions hour after hour that he starts making things up.
He doesn’t do it in England or Ireland because he’ll get found out, but when he’s in a foreign country it’s different. We all do it but Mark is the worst. The code phrase is: “This one time in Cyprus…” and then he’ll start to tell this unbelievable story. None of us has ever been to Cyprus, but he tells it like it’s really happened, we’re all in stitches and none of the interviewers can work out why.
Mark also lies about his age when he’s chatting up girls. He’s only 20, but sometimes in a club if he’s with a girl who’s a bit older he’ll turn to me and say in Irish: “I’m 23 by the way”. We always speak in Irish when we don’t want people to know what we’re saying!

Shane on Mark
Mark will definitely be the last person in the band to settle down and get married. He doesn’t like staying with one girl, he likes to enjoy himself. He really loves going out on the town to different clubs and meeting a different girl every night.
He was seeing a model recently, but I think that was just for a couple of weeks. He’s the youngest and I don’t think he’s looking for a relationship – he likes being free to concentrate on his music.
Mark is the quietest and he likes to do things on his own, but he’s probably the funniest of all of us. He’s the first to finish a punchline and he’s great at taking the mickey of doing impressions of people. Every half an hour he cracks a serious joke.
Mark is very devoted to his family. His grandfather passed away recently and he was really upset about that. He also gets upset when he leaves his mum, but I’m like that too. I can’t say goodbye to my mum without crying. She always cries and I can’t stand to see her in tears so that sets me off.
Mark sleeps more than anyone else in the band. He could sleep on a brick, but he always dribbles out of the side of his mouth when he’s doing it, which doesn’t look very nice!

Westlife on Nicky

Kian on Nicky
Nicky’s got a lot of phobias. He gets scared in lifts and he doesn’t like small spaces. We can’t resist teasing him, we do it all the time.
We’ll get in a lift with him and jump up and down to make it move or pretend it’s broken. He really freaks out and if the lift gets crowded, he starts pleading with people to get out. I’m just in tears laughing at him.
He worries about mobile phones and bought an earpiece in case they give you cancer. He’s frightened of flying and he’s got all these strange superstitions. He insists on ringing every person he knows just before they get on a plane and again once they’ve landed.
Nicky’s very committed to the band and feels strongly about things. He’s very headstrong. If he makes a point and then realises he’s wrong, he’ll still argue that he’s right.
This week, we were discussing whether to do a new dance routine on a TV show next week. The rest of us thought we should wait because we didn’t know it well enough, but he was determined that we go ahead. He kept saying: “We have to do it, we have to do it.” I reckon Nicky’s most likely to get married first. He’s been with his girlfriend for six years. They really love each other and he’s very lucky in that respect.

Mark on Nicky
Nicky’s the romantic one of us all. He was once away for Valentine’s Day and he and his girlfriend Georgina were bitterly disappointed that they weren’t going to see each other.
He never said anything to her, but he flew back to Ireland and when she was in the shower he sneaked into her house and went up to her bedroom and filled it with balloons.
So when she came back into the room all upset that she wasn’t going to see her boyfriend, there he was lying on the bed with a box of chocolates!
It’s one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard of and I’ve always wished the story was about me and that I’d done it for a girlfriend of mine.
Nicky is quite sensible and mature normally, but he’s definitely got a wild streak and he changes the most in drink.
When he’s got a few beers in him he gets very brave. He’ll come up and give you a punch on the jaw just to be friendly. He thinks he’s being playful but it really hurts.
I think out of all of us Nicky was meant to be famous. He missed out on playing football for Leeds United because they dropped him when he was 16. He was destined to be a star.

Shane on Nicky
Nicky’s a top guy and the person I talk to the most. We have a similar personality, the same taste in cars and girls.
If I meet a girl and I’ve been out with her a few times I’ll always ask Nicky for his opinion. He’s good at spotting girls for me, too. Both of us like very sexy girls with long legs and high heels and when we’re out he’ll say: “Shane, you’ll like her over there” and I won’t have noticed her. Or he’ll be sitting at the bar chatting to a girl and shout: “Come over here Shane, there’s someone you should meet.” He’s nearly always right – he’s matched me up with a girl a few times.
Nicky is definitely the most daring when it comes to fashion. He bought a £1,500 pair of sky blue leather trousers recently. And he always wears these stupid, lucky Irish green socks. He’s got about 10 pairs, all covered in shamrocks.
But he has a sensitive side, too. His cousin died in a car accident a year ago and he was very upset about it. We were in Mexico and he wanted to go home so badly he was freaking out, but he couldn’t. That was so hard for him.

Westlife on Shane

Kian on Shane
I’m probably closest to Shane because I tend to see him when I get home as well, whereas the others I usually only see when we’re working. We live near each other in Sligo and we’ve got the same best friends.
Last time we were back home, I got so drunk he had to roll me into a taxi and then roll me out at my house and help me up to bed. Shane’s biggest fault is that he can only concentrate on one thing at once, so if he’s watching TV and you’re talking to him he’s not going to hear a word you say. But when you’ve got his attention he’s very entertaining.
He makes me laugh because he’s always talking in strange voices. Him and a friend back home made up this language called “Nuck” in college a couple of years ago. It’s the funniest thing in the world. They change letters in words and they talk to each other like a couple of little kids. We’ve all listened to it so much that we can understand what they’re saying and it’s kind of like a code language in the band now.

Mark on Shane
With Shane, his character very much depends on his mood. If he’s in a good mood he can be absolutely hilarious, but if he’s not he just doesn’t want to know.
His biggest fault is that he’s downright lazy. I was once at his house in Sligo and he had a video that was due back. The video store is 50 metres away, but he still got in his car and drove there.
It’s the same with his mobile phone. If his phone is in his bag on the other side of the room he’ll ask to borrow my phone rather than bother to get up and fetch his bag.
But he’s a very generous person and he’s very fast to buy a round of drinks. If we go into a bar for just one drink Shane will always be the one to pay. He’s quite happy to spend his money. He’s not as extravagant as Kian when it comes to shopping, but he does enjoy it and he gets quite choosy about the clothes he wears.
I’ll always ask Shane for advice on anything because there’s a mutual respect. He’s helped me out a few times and we’ve got a lot of time for each other, especially when it comes to singing. Shane is so talented. I’m convinced music will always be part of his life.

Nicky on Shane
Shane is great and we get on very well, we have a good laugh and he can tell a joke.
He’s pretty cool and very popular with the girls, but he can be quite vain, particularly about his hair. He can’t pass a mirror without looking into it. He’s quite into clothes, too, but he’s got the worst fashion sense out of the whole band. He doesn’t have a clue.
We’re always warning him the fashion police will be after him, so when he arrives in the morning in a dodgy outfit we pretend to go over and handcuff him. He’ll happily wear white socks and shoes and jeans and bright coloured trousers that don’t match his shirt.
But the worst ever was when we were in Tenerife to shoot the If I Let You Go video. We had a day off beforehand and were all down at the pool. He came down in a vest, really short shorts, a bum bag tied to his waist – and a pair of shades. He just looked like a typical tourist, but the worst thing was he thought he looked really cool! It was terrible!