April 2000 - Top Of The Pops - A Day In The Westlife...

Joining one of the biggest boy bands in the world for a day is the stuff dreams are made of.  Isn't it?  TOTP discovers that being the sixth member of WESTLIFE is all veru galmorous and exciting... but no one said it wouold be such hard work!

Picture this:  Dublin International Airport, 10am, Valentine's Day.  As the Westlife Jet, direct from Germany, touches down, we're all feeling a little bleary-eyed.  There's no time for dozing though - ahead lies a gruelling day of interviews and photo calls topped off by a headlining performance for The ChildLine Concert at Dublin's most famous venue, The Point!

The arrivals lounge is awash with screaming fans brandishing cameras, 'Westlife Rock' banners and TOTP poster mags, all ready for signing.  Surely that's the last thing you need when you've been up since 3.45am with just two hours' sleep under your belt?  "It can be difficult if we're really tired and there are loads of fans waiting," explains Bryan, "but once we see them it gives us a bit of a buzz."

But whar if you're looking really rough?  "Well, we're usually too tired to care," utters a clearly pooped Nicky.  "We always make an effort to smile and give us a good as we can, but we're not going to run and fix ourselves up.  It wouldn't be so bad if we never had to see the pictures, but some of the fans give up a copy and you look at it and it's like...  (gasp of horror)"

And with that we swoop through the airport.  And we mean swoop.  "My feet barely touched the ground!" Kian gasps as we fall into the pop stars Previa waiting to whisk us to our hotel.  We quickly settle in and as the guys wade through their respectice mountains of Valentine's cards and gifts as seize the percious moment for a proper chat.

So is this jet life all it's cracked up to be?
Nicky:  It's great to travel but the last few weeks have been a bit mad/  We've been to LA, New York and South America and the ten-hour flights take on their toll.  At one point we worked a 40-hour day.
Bryan:  After a while you start to get homesick.
Nicky:  It's mad to look at a map of the world and say we've pretty much travelled to every part of it considering the fact that a year ago we hadn't been anywhere.

You must wake up some mornings and think, 'I can't do this today'.
Kian:  Sometimes, especially if you're really jet-lagged, you're just desperate to get back to sleep and you think physically, you can't do it.  But somehow we always manage.
Nicky:  It is a little daunting to think we've actually got a schedule which pretty much takes us up to April nest year/

How do you cope with all the early starts?
Mark:  Well, some of us don't cope with them.  I'm just terrible.  It's not a deliberate thing.  I'm just crap in the mornings.  I was always late every day for school.  It's just the way I am.
Nicky:  The only time he gets up is when we're travelling a long distance in a car cos the first one down always get the first pick of seats.  Apart from that he's terrible.

So would you say you're the hardest working band in pop?
Mark:  I'd say we were definitely strong contenders.  A lot of bands have a schedule similar to ours - bands that have hit that certain level success when it's just non-stop.

Which bands have it the easiest then?
Bryan:  Boyzone!
Nicky:  The Spice Girls!
Mark:  Oh yeah.  All the Spice Girls do these days is shop in Gucci and throw a concert every 12 months!  Only joking girls, by the way!
Bryan:  Michael Jackson's got a pretty easy time of it at the moment and I believe Elvis is pretty relaxed there days too, heh-heh!

Has there ever been a time when you've forgotten which country you were in?
Mark:  We were appearing live on MTV Select in Brazil and the interviewer asked us something about football and I said I wanted the Mexican training tracksuit and everyone just looked at me.  I honestly thought we were in Mexico!
Nicky:  I remember waking up in the middle of the night and I swear I didn't know where I was.  I grabbed my mobile to call Georgina and it was like 12.30am in Dublin.  I was like, 'Where am I?  What am I doing?'  She was laughing, telling me to relax and that I was in Poland.  It was really freaky.

Is it the times when you're really tired and stressed out you're most likely to argue?
Bryan:  We have our little niggles about someone sitting in our seat and stuff but we never properly argue or fight.  We're normally too tired to fight most of the time anyway!

How much longer can you keep going like this?
Bryan:  Another 20 minutes, tops!
Mark:  At the end of the day we're just ordinary people, so of course we're going to get stressed being away from home so much, and sometimes we do snap.  But then you sit back and realise how lucky you are.

Just as we start to relax we arrive at the Berkley Court Hotel, one of Dubline's finest, which has seen names such as Jacko and Leonardo DiCaprio roll into its reception.  Tofay however it's merely the venue for a couple of interviews and a photo shoot for TOTP.  After a quick freshen-up, the boys click into True Professionals mode and the whole caboodle is wrapped in just under two hours.  There;s no reast for the wicked so it's straight off to rehearsals at The Point.  But while we have a spare second...

What's the worst thing about being in Westlife?
Shane:  All the early starts.  Being away from home can get you down too.  Sometimes youre on the other side of the world and all you want is to be at home with your family and a nice cup of tea.
Mark:  Having to shave every single day is pretty bad too.  I hate it, esoecially cos I'm terrible at getting up in the morning, I usually only have five minutes to do it and end up with a slashed face, dripping with blood!
Nicky:  Interviews can be pretty bad sometimes if you
re doing like, 40 of them in a row.  It's fine in Britain and Ireland cos there's usually a theme or a topic, but elsewhere when they start asking you the basicsm we end up making stuff up just to keep ourselves amused.
Bryan:  To start with we used to fight over who did the interviews cos we all wanted to.  Now we're only too glad to let one of the others do it!  (Unless it's TOTP, of course!)

Do you ever feel you don't need to do them anymore?
Shane:  The day we feel that was is the day we become too big for our boots.  The way we feel is that we're still babies in this industry.  We've only been going for just over a year and so for us to start thinking that way would be so mad.  It doesn't matter how many interviews you do, one more is always going to help you.  Even if it turns out to be a bad interview, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Do you still feel excited about appearing on front covers?
Shane:  Of course!  I can't wait to see how this cover turns out.  I'm really looking forward to running into the shop and buying it.
Nicky:  I remember the first time we ever saw oursleves in a magazine... it was TOTP in fact.
Kian:  We were in Everyone's Talking About and it was when we were still called Westside.
Nicky:  We were just so chuffed!  You never forget that buzz.

We arrive at The Point where preperations are fully under way for this evening's star-studded ChildLine benefit gig.  The Westlife rehearsal goes without a hitch so the band ahve a brief rest preiod and the chance to grb some well earned grub - a pretty darned good chicken tikka and rice as it turns out.  This is swiftly washed down with a press conference which sees the guys beseiged by practically every newspaper, radio station and telly programme in Ireland - it's enough to give Pavarotti indigestion!

Aren't press conference just a wee bit scary though?
Mark:  Oh no, they're excellent.  It's almost like walking up the red carpey.  They make you feel really important.
Bryan:  Do you remember tthe one we did in Taiwan?  It was fantastic.  It was called Get To Know Westlife and we were all in seperate booths.  We had these pieces of card and they'd ask us questions like 'Who's the laziest?' and we'd ahve to write the answers on the card.  It worke so well!  They got so much out of us, stuff we normally wouldn't have said.
Shane:  By the end of it Bryan was doing impressions of me in front of the whole crowd.  It was so funny!

You must ahve been asked some pretty bad questions in your time?
Kian:  Questions referring to virginity are always embarrassing and a bit too personal.
Shane:  One of the first questions we were ever asked in Germany was about sex.
Mark:  It's just a bit disrespectful really cos these people don't know us and that's the first thing they ask.  Can you imagine just giong up to somebody in a club and asking, 'So when was the first time you had sex?'
Shane:  Any questions relating toi stuff like that we just don't answer.  It's too personal.
Mark:  The thing is though, in places like Germany it's perfectly normal to talk about stuff like that.  I'll never forget opening a teen magazine in Holland abd seeing ipctures on naked teenagers in it.  You'd never see that in the UK or Ireland.
Shane:  It's not that we're prudes or anything, we just have respect for people's privacy.

Do you feel as if people are watching you the whole time?
Bryan:  It just comes back to being careful.  THe papers go mad if they see us talking to a girl.  I've lost track of the number of people I've been linked with.
Shane:  Bryan's been getting a real hammering about girls in the press recently.
Mark:  It's so unfair though.
Bryan:  The best example was when we were at Titanic one night and I was takling to Jamie from Hepburn and her boyfriend.  But of course, the story the next day was that I was going out with her!
Shane:  The thing is it's really affected him.  The poor fella's now afraid to meet any girls.
Bryan:  It's tough cos I'm now afraid to appraoch girls and girls from other bands don't talk to us cos they;'re scared of us being linked.  Bit it's an aspect of business we're in and we have to accept it.
Mark:  People must think Bryan's a complete slapper and he so isn't!  Please set the story straight once and for all/ (Consider it done!)

So does this job make you paranoid?
Kian:  Absolutely cos people are always looking at you.  It got so bad at one point I actually thought someone had tapped my phone.  The suddenly I just thought, 'As if'!

Withthe exception if Nicky you're all single.  Do you worry you won't find time to set the foundations for a relationship with someone?
Shane:  It probably won't happen for a few years.
Kian:  The situation for the four of us is very difficult when we meet a girl.  First of all we don't know if they like us for hwo we are or for what we are.  And if you're away for, like, the next four months, how are you giong to get teh chance to get to know them?  Life is so lonely sometimes.
Shane:  You sometimes just get this urge to go out and go rampant, have a drink and be daft.
Mark:  Just like every other person our age.
Shane:  The thing is we can't do it because of who we are and because we probably have to get up at the crack of dawn the next day.
Kian:  It's actually really cos if you look your average 19-year-old guy from Sligo and told him he couldn't go out, have a few beers and puill a girl because of his job, he'd think you were mad!
Mark:  It's scary to think we attract that kind of attention and you could be fooled by a girl who could be the bexst actress in the world.  You've actually got to be a good judge if character to do this job, definitely.

With every second of today's schedule accounted for the next stop is a meet and greet with the fans.  After all, they're teh reason we're all here and it also provides the perfect opportunity to find out what it is about these five Irish chappies that ahs gotten under everyone's skin...

By now the kick-off time for the gig is approaching, but Westlife have quite a wait ahead of them.  As the headlining act they've earned the honour of performing last, a feat even more incredible considering that at the same event last year, Westside were the opening, warm-up act!

The boys make use of their valuable free time (if you can call it that) by chilling out backstage and chatting to other acts, in between picking out their outfits and having the old make-up touched up!  Somehow they also manage to aqueeze in a pep talk from head Westlife honcho, manager Louis Walsh, before we nab the fanatic fivesome again...

So apart from stamina what other essential qualities would a sixth member need?
Kian:  Well, the voice is the manin thing.  You have to be able to sing.
Shane:  It's not so muchthat we can sing well indivually but we can sing well together as a group.  We don;t boast about it but that's rge main quality that sets us apart.

Would a sixth member have to be Irish?  Are Westlife Equal Opportuinties Employers?
Kian:  You'd probably have a better chance if you were Irish.  It'd be a bonus!
Mark:  But, like, if Michael Jackson called us up saying he wanted to jion the band we're not likely to turn around and say 'Sorry Mike but you're not Irish!  Tough!'
Shane:  I'm not sure if we could have another blond actually cos they already outnumber the dark-haired ones.  Perhaps we could have someone with red hair.
Bryan:  Or pink?!
Kian:  Yeah, someone we could have a dig at and slag off.  'Ah, shut up you there with your blue hair!'
Mark:  If you can't take a good slagging then don't even think about joining Westlife.
Shane:  We always niggle each other about one thing and we all know about it but nobody else does.  It's something we keep between the five of us.  For example I could say one word to Kian and it would wind him up a treat.

It wouldn't have anything to do with an in joke about horses, would it?
Shane:  That's not the exact one I was thinking of but Kian is afraid of horses.
Kian:  No it's not that, it's just that I'm a stallion!
The Rest:  Yeah right!
Shane:  You so are scared of horses!  When we were younger he'd come along when I was doing shows and stuff but eh wouldn't go near the horses.  I was like, 'It's a horse man!  It's just like a big dog!' but he was having none of it.
Kian:  They're just too big, man.  I don't mind other big animals.
Shane:  Oh, I don't like bulls, they're vicous man.  And ostriches, they're freaky as well!

It's 9:30 pm and Westlife finally take to the stage amid the hysterical screams of the crowd.  This is the moment they've all been waiting for.  The lads deliver a blistering set of all their hits and the fans go mental!

Clearly exhausted but exhilarated the guys kick back in the hotel bar.  There's no denying it's been one heck of a day.  Glancing at a clearly shattered and somewhat dishevelled TOTP journol Shane poses the inevitable, dreaded question: Same time tomorrow?

Erm, thanks guys but I think we'll leave this lark up to the professtions!