The singer on coming to terms with the loss of his bandmate Stephen Gately
Keith Duffy has just flown in from Dublin, where he lives, and nice cabbie Steve from Islington is taking us from Heathrow to BBC Television Centre for a guest slot on The Alan Titchmarsh Show. The reason he’s speaking to us, and then to Alan, is because his character Ciaran McCarthy has returned to the Coronation Street cobbles after a gap of nearly five years. ‘Is he going to be back to his good old womanising ways? Yeah, baby. He’s a bold boy!’
But Keith is well aware that, apart from the interest in Ciaran, people will want to ask him about Stephen Gately, his former band mate in Boyzone, who died last October.
‘It’s awkward. Ronan [Keating] had his album out in Australia over Christmas and the press kept asking him about Stephen. Then people said, “Does that guy not talk about anything else?” I don’t want to parade on Stephen’s misfortune. But I miss him, he’s my mate.’
Apart from anything else, he says, coming back to work in Manchester five days a week on Coronation Street has provided a welcome distraction. ‘The past few months have been horrendous. Corrie’s given me a focus, something to get my teeth into, different surroundings.’
You have to know a little bit about Boyzone to understand why Stephen’s death has been so devastating. Keith is 36 next month, but Boyzone came together when he was 18, and he was the second eldest of the group. All of them – Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Mikey Graham, Stephen Gately and Keith – were young men who grew up within a five-mile radius of each other on the Northside of Dublin. Then Louis Walsh decided to put together an ‘Irish Take That’.
‘We grew up in a pretty rough area of Dublin,’ Keith explains. ‘We went through a lot of life-changing experiences: Ro was very young when his mother passed away. That was tough for him and we were there to help him. So we were close.’
As Keith describes it, Boyzone found fame the hard way, slogging their way round Ireland, ‘travelling around with our pillows, in a van with no windows!’ He remembers their television debut, a disastrous slot on Ireland’s The Late Late Show that is now a YouTube classic: ‘Jedward look like the Rolling Stones compared to us!’
Westlife, the boy band Louis Walsh created next, had it simple, he says: ‘When it did come good for us we’d earned it. It was easy for them to start off – they went straight on to our stage with a sold-out audience.’
What he’s saying is that Boyzone are close because they’ve always had to struggle. ‘Anything we’ve achieved, we’ve achieved together – there’s a great bond between us.’ And that bond has grown stronger since Stephen died. ‘It’s made us realise how close we actually are.’
Keith has two children with his wife Lisa: Jordan, 14 (‘I was so young when he was born that we’ve kind of grown up together; we’re more like friends’), and Mia, ten next month.
Mia has autism so, Keith says, she has a different way of dealing with her emotions. She provided a welcome tonic when he returned from Majorca, where Stephen died, to arrange his friend’s funeral. ‘I walked into my kitchen and she said, “Hi Dad, Stephen died so now you guys are only four. You’ve got to finish the album because Stephen said you’re bringing a new album out in 2010 and you can’t let Stephen down.”
I said, “She’s right – we have to do this for Stephen.” The lads all agreed.’
So Boyzone will release the single ‘Gave It All Away’ on 1 March as a tribute to Stephen, followed by a new album a week later. Keith says that it would be nice if it sold well, but in the main he’s been thankful for the experience of recording the song and making the video, both of which feature Stephen. ‘It’s actually helped me deal with the grieving process much better than I was. I was struggling to move on for a while.’
But move on he has, to Coronation Street, and, he hopes, further fields. ‘I’m very ambitious but I’m the wrong side of 35. I’m enjoying my time in Corrie but, to be honest, what I’d really love to do is American TV. I’m on the best show in Britain at the moment, but American TV just has that special shine to it. I love The Wire. I’d love to be in something like that.’
Source: You Magazine
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