Even though I was still young when I left Leeds United, recalls Nicky, I'd become used to a nice lifestyle. Also, I'm a very proud person and I didn't want anyone to think I'd failed. I especially didn't want my mam and dad thinking I'd failed. But I didn't know what I wanted to do next. Ever since I was a kid, apart from football, I'd wanted to be a copper. But I wasn't really sure what was going to happen next.
I did a repeat year at Plunkett College in White Hall and started playing for Shelbourne FC, one of the big clubs in Ireland ("Shelbourne Sign Irish Ace!" read their bulletin headline, then people read it and thought, Who the fuck is he?) But I was doing too much - working, studying, training. It was no good.
I'd landed back in Ireland with about ten grand in my bank account. Despite my disappointment at the way things had turned out, at least the money meant I didn't have to rush my next move. I got a job at Alias Tom's clothes shop in Dublin city centre which paid £150 a week and toyed with the idea of buying a Suzuki Vitara Jeep with mots of the ten grand, but ended up spending £400 to insure me dad's Seat Cordova. Dad loved it because I was able to drive him to his gigs at night and he could have a drink, and I loved it because once I'd dropped him off, usually about 7 p.m., I had a car for the evening.
While I was passing my exams, I'd started singing in karaoke bars. I'd be working late in Alias Tom's, get home, have my dinner, get changed, miss football training and go to karaoke instead. After a while, I was confident enough to enter some karaoke competitions and I did OK, getting to some semi-finals and the odd final. Funnily enough, I was almost always singing Take That and Boyzone songs. I'd played Boyzone a lot when I was at Leeds United. Songs like "Father and Son" really made me miss home. The players used to take the piss out of me and call me Ronan, even. Georgina's dad had met the band somewhere and he'd even got her a signed album, which we listened to non-stop. They were the songs I knew, they were the songs I was listening to. I didn't really listen to the Backstreet Boys. It wasn't that I didn't like them, I just didn't know much about them and I liked backing the Irish boys. A lot of fellas were into Boyzone; it wasn't uncool to like them.
One day I rang my dad and said, "Listen, if I buy a karaoke machine and some discs out of the money I've got left over from Leeds, will you come around with me when you're not gigging your own shows? We'll try and book a few venues that do karaoke."
He loved the idea, so we started playing shows where I'd present and sing two songs, then he'd do two songs, then we'd start asking the audience to come up and do a song. Suddenly I was working the clubs.
I got all these "business" cars printed. We were called - genius idea - Father and Son Karaoke.
I was honestly starting to think about going down the road my dad had taken. I was looking to get a band together too and hopefully start working like that.
My normal day would consist of dropping Dad off to work, going to school, finishing there mid-afternoon, then heading up to the suburbs of north Dublin, where I doorstepped pretty much every pub in the area. I'd meet the manager, give them my card, tell them we'd been doing this for years and years, chat about playing for Leeds and just generally use a bit of banter to get work. We got a couple of college socials through friends, then we got our first ever Friday night at the local pub, Gibneys, in Malahide, through a friend of mine and Georgina's at school.
One day Georgina phoned me and said, "My auntie's just heard something about auditions for a new band."
It turned out someone was forming a traditional Irish boy band playing old instruments and singing classic Irish folk songs. I got all the info and it just asked for a picture and a demo tape and stated that playing an instrument would be preferable but not essential.
Georgina's sister, the novelist Cecelia Ahern, had been a big Take That fan, so that meant I'd been listening to more and more of this boy band stuff. I remember watching Take That on Top of the Pops and that's the first time I started to admite to liking the idea of being in a boy band. I sat there and thought to myself, Five lads, touring the world, making loads of money, girls everywhere, they must be having a right craic. I even went to the barbers one day and asked for Jason Orange's haircut.
So now, a few years later, I decided to give it a go. I don't know if it was the fame game or money or success or all of it rolled into one that I craved. I was definitely into the music thing by this point, even though I didn't have a lot of experience.
Funnily enough, I'd recently seen a photo in the Evening Herald of this new boy band - six lads called IOYOU. I didn't recognize any of them and didn't think anything more of it. It just said Louis Walsh had given them a slot supporting the Backstreet Boys. It sounded like they would do well. I thought, Lucky bastards.
Back in the week before my audition for the traditional band, I didn't have a demo tape, so my dad got our karaoke microphones out and set them up in the front room. Dad, Georgina and my little brother Adam were there. They kept laughing at me and I was getting really irate. I kept pressing "Stop" halfway through a song and starting again.
Eventually I got a demo finished. It was a pretty rough recording, but it was good enough. It included "Scorn Not his Simplicity", a pretty sad song about a Down's Syndrome child, and "Father and Son" by Boyzone. Previously, I'd paid £100 to have some photos taken for a modelling agency who then never called me back, so I used those professional shots for this audition package and sent it all off.
Then one day this guy phoned the house and asked me along to the auditions at the Pod. My mam was going for a test on her throat that day, so I was a bit worried about her, and I hadn't told anyone I was going for the audition. So I just got on the train into town wearing a black shiny suit and a royal blue tie, I really dressed smart. I like dressing up for certain occasions and I figured that with Boyzone, every time you saw them they were wearing shirts and ties.
There were hundreds of lads in the queue for the audition with numbers stuck to them, just like you see on the X Factor auditions nowadays. I was number 18, and number 12 was a lad called Brian McFadden. I'd seen this tall, bleached blong guy already - he just stood out a mile. He looked a little like Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys and he just seemed a little more funky than the rest of the queue. I stood there and thought, Shite, he already looks like a member of a boy band. It's weird, because I don't remember anyone else in the whole room.
Brian came over to me - which was equally weird, because I'd never met him before - and said, "You sing out in the Swords Manor, don't you?" It turned out he'd seen me doing karaoke in the pubs out there. "A couple of the lads over there are talking about you. They've heard you sing."
Brian got up and sang before me and he was good. He was very good. He had the look, he was confident and I thought to myself, Jesus, he's good. I wouldn't mind being in a band with him. Prior to Brian, guys had been up there playing violins and pianos, slaughtering Corrs songs, so he stood out a mile.
When it came to my turn, I stood up ready to sing "Father and Son". There's a four bar intro before the opening line; now, I'd sung this a thousand times in karaoke bars, I knew it inside out, but for some reason, I completely fluffed it by coming in after two bars. I wasn't experienced enough to recover it, so I just blocked out the music and carried on singing. I could see a man standing on the judging panel waving his hand at his throat, gesturing to cut the audition music, but I just kept singing.
And the judges kept listening.
Then they cut the music.
I kept singing, a capella.
They kept listening. For most of the song.
I knew it was a good sign, because some of the previous auditioners hadn't lasted a verse before the dreaded, "Thank you very much. Next!"
I'd heard one of the men on the panel was Louis Walsh. I knew his name, but I didn't know what he looked like. He'd been asked by the man forming the traditional boy band to help him, given Boyzone's huge profile at the time. In fact, what Louis had also done was take the opportunity to scout for new talent to complete the line-up for Westlife.
Louis had invited me to these auditions after we'd cut Graham, explains Kian. I was sitting there watching all these lads singing, armed with my Filofax, all organized, taking the numbers of the guys we liked. Louis really liked Nicky straight away. He was dressed in a suit, he looked quite smart and he had a really good attitude about him and a great look. You could tell he knew what he wanted and he came across as being a wee bit more mature than some of the others.
Brian seemed as mas as a hatter - but in a good way! He had these big baggy jeans on and a funky jacket and was all blah, blah, blah, talking 500 miles an hour. Both of those lads were brilliant.
I was walking up the stairs to leave, continues Nicky, when someone said, "They want you to stay behind a while, if you don't mind."
I was taken to another part of the club and there, already waiting, was Brian McFadden. Then a security man came over and explained that Louis Walsh wanted to talk to me. I knew then that I was in with a chance, this had to be a good sign.
I'd never met Louis before and he came right up to me, talking really fast. I tried to catch what he was saying.
"Hello, Nicky, how are you? My name's Louis Walsh and I'm putting together a new pub band and I'd like you to be in it."
I didn't want to be in a pub band, but this was Louis Walsh, you know, yer man with Boyzone.
"OK, great. Yes."
Louis was off again, speaking like a machine gun, and all I could do was say, "Yes", while all the time thinking, I don't want to be in a pub band. My mates don't know I'm here, there seems to be a film crew outside and I'm gonna go home and announce I've got a job in a pub band.
"... so if you'd wait around please, Nicky," Louis continued, "we'd like to get some photos of you before you leave.
The photographer came over and Louis said, as bold as brass, "This is Nicky Byrne and he's going to be in my new pub band," and with that, he left. It was like a whirlwind leaving the building..
Then Kian Egan walked over and introduced himself.
I didn't know him from Adam. It was the first time I'd set eyes on him.
"Hi, I'm Kian Egan and I'm in a band called IOYOU. Louis is going to manage us and we are looking for one other person."
"Is this the pub band Louis has been telling me about?" I asked.
"No, no, away with ya, we're a pop band."
"Aaahhhh, a pop band. Fucking hell, that's a big difference!"
"Louis really likes you," said Kian, "and we're going to be holding auditions. There are a few other people here he likes, but he really likes you, you're his favourite. What's your plan for the rest of the day...?"
Shane: So Louis had scaled it down to about 60 lads and then we had to go and audition them in Dublin. It was exactly like X Factor - we all sat there in front of these guys who came in and sang for us.
Brian McFadden was the first person on stage and Nicky Byrne was the second.
Every single lad who came on after that, we all just kept comparing them to Brian and Nicky. There were plenty of good-looking fellas, and great singers too, but none of them made as much impact as Brian and Nicky. Louis felt that myseld and Mark had lead vocals, so we wanted two lads who could sing, but also there was a lot of pressure on them to fit in with the look that he wanted. The few that we chose then came and spoke to us and it was still just between Nicky and Brian.
I really got on with Brian while we were auditioning, continues Nicky, so we'd swapped phone numbers. Then he rang and we arranged to meet up. The night before singing in front of IOYOU, Brian and me had done karaoke together at a local pub and he was brilliant. He sang the Backstreet Boys song "Quit Playing Games" and I was after singing Boyzone numbers. I put my money on Boyzone coming up the next day.
So then at the audition all the lads from Sligo - Kian, Shane, Mark and Michael - said to me, "Right, come upstairs, just us lot. We're going to do some songs with you."
I was thinking, Please be Boyzone songs, please be Boyzone songs...
"Right," said Kian, "we're gonna be singing some Backstreet Boys songs..."
Shite
"Do you know 'Quit Playing Game'?
Thank God for that.
I sang melody with them and then Brian went up and he sang too. He was very good.
Brian had blond curtains for hair, remembers Kian, so he did indeed look like Nick Carter. This was the way we were thinking: we weren't thinking small scale at all, we were thinking of the big fish. I loved Brian's vibe and look, and he could really sing, but I was unsure about him being so lively, "I don't know", I said, "he's mand!"
Fortunately, the rest of the band persuaded me that he could be brilliant - and they were right. I was all for Nicky - he was great, sang well, looked perfect, he was the one as far as I was concerned. It was those two by a mile we wanted to choose the new member from, but there was a complication: Shane and Mark favoured Brian; Louis and myself favoured Nicky.
They were both good-looking lads and Brian gave us that bass harmony while Nicky sang melody brilliantly. We just couldn't decide between them, so Louis suddenly said, "Well, why don't we have both of them?"
Someone pointed out that we'd then be back to six members.
"Well, in that case," said Louis, "we'll include them both and take a vote on the final five."
I spoke to Nicky and said, "What we want to do to make up our mind is this: will you come down to Sligo with Brian and live with us for a while? We'll rehearse, hang out, get to know each other better. Then we'll take a vote on the final five."
He didn't know us at all and I know he'd been with Georgina three years at this stage, but he was very keen. He said yes, and so did Brian.
It's interesting, looking back, because Louis really let us pick to a certain extent. He gave us a lot of power in that decision. I knew why too. Louis had done the Boyzone thing and that was a band that had come together for the project. We were a band that had already started and had this tight camaraderie; we were proper mates. Louis liked that. He didn't want it to be "his" band, he wanted it to be "our" band. He thought that was a better way of approaching it.
So I came back home to me man and dad's, explains Nicky, and tell them that I'm now going to move to Sligo to live with an unsigned boy band. I remember my mam's face. I could sense she was thinking, "What are you doing now, love?"
I got the train down there with Brian. It was quite awkward, because they sent me to live with Michael at his parent's house and Brian went to stay with Shane. I'd heard that Louis was quite keen to get rid of Michael, so I felt very uncomfortable sleeping under his roof, if that was the case. I remember standing outside his sitting room and he was talking to his parents, explaining about these two Dublin boys and what was going to happen. Then I heard his mum say, "Well, are they any good?" You could tell alarm bells were ringing for her. To be fair, Michael said, "Yes, they are both very good."
We all went out for a beer that night and I told Shane it was just too uncomfortable, it didn't feel right being at Michael's. He was really cool about it and afterwards made up some reason why it would be easier for me to stay over at his parent's café.
Louis had said to the lads, "I'm not making that call from six to five, because I've already got rid of Derek and Graham." People might think Louis is a cut-throat music biz manager, but he isn't like that. Because of the family connection with Shane's mum in Kiltimagh, I don't think he felt comfortable being that harsh with them. That's why he said it had to go to a vote. He did have a vote himself, but it was only one of five. He had always given the band a lot of power, which was fantastic for me to see, coming from football, where you were given none.
In the meantime, continues Kian, Louis had organized several showcases for UK record labels and people were flying in to see us. We rehearsed for several weeks and got really tight. Then we all swapped places and left Sligo to live with Brian and Nicky in Dublin (Mark stayed with his aunty in Black Rock).
The label Louis really wanted this time around was Virgin. The Spice Girls were massive at the time with them and on the day we auditioned for them, their act Billie Piper had gone to number 1 and Louis was dead set on getting them.
Michael knew he was under pressure and at that audition he'd pulled a chair up beside the two girls from Virgin and was being really friendly, talking about the Spice Girls and all that. I think perhaps he sold himself a bit too much, though. It was awkward to see, but to be fair he wanted to impress, he knew the pressure was on.
At one point, Louis took Michael to one side and used one of his all-time favourite sayings: "Michael, you're trying too hard."
We did an entire dance routine, says Shane, and then five a capella songs, and I think we sang it all very well.
They didn't like us.
Louis was gutted.
We couldn't believe it, because we were really confident in what we were doing and in our ability. It really bothered Louis.
Although I'd head I had a good chance, recalls Nicky, and that Michael's position was weak, I was still very nervous when the day came to take a vote on the final five members of the band. We met at the Red Box and all went to a room where Louis was waiting for us. He announced that there was to be a vote to decide which one out of three lads were going to get cut.
"It's between Nicky, Michael and Brian," he said.
We were all sitting round a circular table and it was pretty tense. I would imagine Kian, Mark and Shane were pretty relieved, although it had been fairly common knowledge that they were going to be safe.
Graham, who'd been in the band but then been cut and made tour manager, said, "Right, the majority want Brian to be in the band at the moment."
I kind of knew this was the way it was heading, so now it was down to just me and Michael. Still, I was devastated. Michael was too, he just put his head down. I was looking around nervously, unsure what to think. Shane had spoken to me previously and pretty much said Louis had an issue with Michael but here we were, nonetheless...
Louis said, "I'll leave it up to you, I don't want to make this call, lads."
Michael never moved. His head was still bowed.
So Graham said, "We are going to have a secret ballot in the toilet..." and as he was talking, Louis Walsh was looking at me, sticking his thumb up and pointing at me.
We all voted and then Graham, God bless him, came out with the bits of paper. He stood at the table and then spoke: "The members of IOYOU are: Shane Filan, Kian Egan, Mark Feehily, Brian McFadden and Nicky Byrne."
Michael just sank. His shoulders fell, he was devastated. Then his phone rang and he just threw it across the room and walked away from the table. Some of the lads went to give him a pat on the back and talk to him, but he was too upset, he wasn't really having any of it.
I went over and said, "Look, Michael, I'm probably the last person you want to hear say this, but I got a proper kick in the bollocks when I left Leeds. You've just got to pick yourself up and move on."
He didn't even acknowledge me. I don't blame him, to be fair - it was a really hard situation to be in.
The atmosphere was really sombre and although I was delighted, it didn't feel right to jump up and down and shout and all that. I shook all the lads' hands and they congratulated me. Then I made for the door.
I opened it and there was Louis Walsh, grinning from ear to ear like an excited schoolboy, holding his mobile phone towards me, saying, "Ring your mother, ring your mother!"
It was so hard for Michael, reflects Shane. It was difficult for us, but I can't imagine how gutted he must have been. It was so harsh on him.
At the time, Gillian's best friend Helena was dating Michael and the girls had been on a two-week holiday to America together. So Michael and myself went off to the airport to pick them up and it was so weird, so uncomfortable, like. Poor Nicky was the driver! I was meeting my girlfriend and I was in the band; Michael was meeting his girlfriend and he wasn't. It was terrible. He was crying, he was disappointed, and I can totally understand that.
Michael was a good-looking lad, he was a sound man, he was great, but he probably had the weakest voice out of all of us. We knew it and maybe Michael knew it too. His personality was great - he was a cracking fella - but it came down to him and it was terrible again.
Michael went on to become a copper in Ireland, says Nicky, which was ironic for me. I'd done my school exams and then some exams for the Irish police force, the Gardaí, and I was waiting on a medical to be called when I was chosen to be in IOYOU. My mam got a letter not long afterwards giving me a date for my Garda medical and a start day for training. She wrote back and said I was "otherwise engaged".
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