New Brian Interview - Very Long and Very Intresting!

YOU might be forgiven for believing that Brian McFadden is what he himself calls "a real prick". He did, after all, ditch his wife Kerry Katona during a phone call, slept with at least four well-known female pop stars then publicly humiliated Kerry not long after their relationship ended by recording the Almost Here duet with his 'New Love' Delta Goodrem, right? Wrong. In fact, none of these stories is true. At least that's what Brian told me during this interview, which he promised would be "totally honest". Partly, apparently, because he's still grateful I gave him his first serious interview when he was "just a kid starting out with Westlife!"! But more than that, McFadden is angry about - andanxious to undo - the negative image of himself thathas been perpetuated over the past two years, "by themedia in general and tabloids in particular". And which has left him feeling "Ireland isn't my home or a place to come to feel safe, but a place I feared coming back to" and his mum devastated. "To see my reputation destroyed in Ireland and read people slagging me and calling me this and that destroyed my mother," he says, with a passion that defines ourconversation in the Merrion Hotel during Brian's one-day visit to Dublin from London, where he now lives. "Every day she seemed to be onthe f**king Joe Duffy show defending me, denying some story." Maybe, but the "incredibly positive response" Brian got after his recent appearance on Tubridy Tonight makes him believe "the tide is turning" and the same, he hopes, will be true after this interview. But Brian and I did agree in advance not to "just go over the same old story" about how he was born and raised in Dublin, has one sister, got his gig in Westlife etc. He and I already told that tale in this newspaper six years ago. We also, three years later, did an interview with himself and Kerry which very much concentrated on her story. So, this time round, let's just bring up to date the life of this particular Brian, who now is 27, left Westlife in 2004 and a year later parted from Katona. But first, in that last interview,did I mislead readers by depicting himself and Kerry as a loving couple? Was all the handholding and kissing that day in a hotel in Portmarnock just a pose? "Let me answer that question this way. I was very young when I met her and no one ever loved me before," he responds, before adding, "of course" when asked if by this he means outside his family. "Of course, but that was the first time I was ever loved by a girl and I'd ever been in love, and it all overwhelmed me. And I just got lost." Maybe. But such an assertion really does need to be seen in the context of Brian telling me in 2001 that as a young teenager in school he was called "Fat Faggot McFadden" because he went to Billie Barry's stage school and "had no girlfriends". So is he now suggesting he always felt unworthy of love? "Definitely, and those feelings were still there when I was 19 and joined Westlife," he responds. "In fact, before joining Westlife I'd only ever kissed one girl! And even when we were touring at the start I'd get even more lonely looking at the other lads in the group with their long-time girlfriends - and I'm sure Mark had a boyfriend - whereas I had no one. So when Kerry came along and wanted me, that gap was filled and I felt good simply because I had someone to share everything with. Then she got pregnant, and everything went into even more of a mad whirl." In what sense? "It was such a shallow showbiz life being in Westlife," says Brian, that his relationship with Kerry, instead of making him feel "grounded", became "even more and more" part of that shallow fantasy. "I understand now why my private life became as artificial as my life in Westlife but at the time I didn't see it happening," he elaborates. "For example, I never stopped to think, 'You really should get to know this person before you have kids, think of marrying or settle down.' I never took the time to work that outuntil it had all run away with me. So then, when we had the first baby, bought a house, spent time together and Westlife became the same thing over and over, I woke up one morning and realised, 'This is not what I want to do with my life, I don't see myself being with this woman in 20 years, she's not who I'm meant to be with, we don't have anything in common.' "But, at the start, I didn't think of that. It was just, 'She loves me - who cares?' Another problem was that we became a 'showbiz couple', everyone was talking about us, paparazzi photographers were everywhere and that, too, swept me off my feet." Brian, tellingly, then pauses but only long enough to sip his Diet Coke. "But y'know what I hated hated, hated?" he asks rhetorically: "Hello! doing our wedding album. She loved it, I detested all the 'arms around each other', or 'sitting at piano' [photos], and I remember one day in Spain the guy gave us two water pistols and said 'Can you run around shooting each other?' and I said, 'I'm not doing this, you can keep your money, I'm f**king done with it.' "We'd a massive falling-out over this, me and Kerry, and I said it was the last time I'd do anything like that, and we never got the money from Hello! because we didn't give them what they wanted, even if they did use the photos. But even the wedding was a circus, with 400 people! We didn't know half of them, and most we'd met only once or twice! That's not a f**king wedding! Two people fall in love and celebrate it by getting married with their closest family and friends but we had f**king VIP passes for our wedding and special rooms in the castle where VIP guests could stay so they wouldn't have to mix with our families! It was ridiculous. "Then we got our wedding album with a picture of me and Ronan, me and Westlife, me and Louis Walsh! That's not a f**king wedding album. But then it wasn't a real wedding. We weren't getting married to tell everyone we were going to spend our lives together. We were getting married to have a big party and gets loads of money for it and to be showbiz. "We didn't even see each other on our wedding night! We got married, went back to the castle, I was with my mates, she was with hers, we went to bed at separate times and never had anything! Then the next morning Joanne [Byrne, Brian's PR woman] woke me to OK the wedding pictures for the press! So, I don't see my first marriage as a real marriage. It was a showbiz marriage, a fantasy." Perhaps. But also present at that wedding was Brian and Kerry's first child, Molly, who was six months old. So hadn't her birth - as the birth of a first child can for many a man and woman - snapped McFadden awake to reality? "No, because, again, I was too young to understand what it meant and though this is a terrible thing to say, I was so immature that having a child was like getting a dog," he responds, honouring his promise to be totally honest. "It was more like, 'Cool, having a kid will be fun,' never considering what was involved in being a father or thinking, 'I've got a job that keeps me occupied 365 days a year.' "And I do think if Molly hadn't come along in the first place, we never would have married. We were engaged and called it off, but two weeks later came the pregnancy and it was back on. I definitely feel if we didn't have kids, the marriage wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. In fact, when Kerry got pregnant with our second child, Lilly, our relationship was over but we couldn't even consider breaking up so we had another goat it." Back in 2003, therefore, when I interviewed Brian and Kerry they weren't faking affection, they were having "another go at" the marriage. "That is true, but to everyone else looking at us, it seemed like we were two, young happy people always in love," Brian responds. "Yet, deep down, I wasn't. And, obviously, that stag night story started our marriage off badly and if I'm to be completely honest, the day my marriage ended was that stag night,before I even got married. That was the time I felt, 'This is not supposed to be.' That was the first crack and everyone saw it." Hardly. In fact, last time round, Brian asked me not to mention what he now describes as "the blow job Igot from a lap dancer" andI didn't! "Well, at first I denied it ever happened but then I was taken to court for defamation of character for calling her a liar and that [case] went on for three years," he says. "And I asked you not to mention it not just because of my marriage but because I was still in Westlife and we had 12-year-olds buying our records, reading interviews, I had to be responsible over that." Fair enough. But speaking of Westlife, Brian seems just as eager to put on the record the "real reasons" he left the group - which is, let's face it, fundamentally, as with U2, a multimillioneuro-making music machine. Yet, that, as it transpires, is precisely why McFadden finally had to leave. And the breaking point was Westlife recording Mandy. "We'd worked our arses off doing the Turnaround album, which was mostly original songs . . . brilliant," he says. "But then we put out the single Hey Whatever but it only went to number three - as far as I'm concerned, it just didn't get the record company support it deserved. "Then Simon Cowell says, 'I told you what happens when you want to make your own albums. You're going to be dropped, but I have the record that will save your career,' and he played Barry Manilow's Mandy. Then, to me, he basically tarnished a great album by kicking it off with Mandy and I decided, 'I can't do this music any more.' I couldn't stomach the idea of doing the rounds singing Mandy but the other lads were happy to do that. Yet, they didn't write songs, they have no need to be creative at that level, they want to be successful, so if singing Mandy will make them millions that's what they'll do. Whereas I'd rather be number three with a song we wrote." The "final straw" for Brian came when Paul Higgins, head of security and his best friend in the group, took time out from working with them and then it was decided that the band didn't want him back. But Brian's split didn't come until "after a press conference at the Meteor Awards" when "nine out of the 10 questions asked by the press" were about Brian's private life, and the other members of Westlife later "lashed into" him, saying "that was a f**king disgrace", and he left. McFadden also reveals that even if, on that night's RTE news reports of Westlife's break-up, his four fellow-members of the group were "highly emotional" it wasn't because of him leaving. 'NO, it was because they thought this was the end of Westlife, the end of their careers," he says. "But they had asked me to reconsider and I did. I said I'd finish the tour because I wanted a final payoff! Yet, they were going to split upbut then Louis Walsh - who is my friend now but wasn'tthen - talked them out of that and they came back to me and said 'We don't want you to do the tour.' "They didn't want me making any more money if I wasn't to be involved after that. But I love the lads and they are there if I need them. Yet I've never regretted leaving Westlife and wouldn't go back. Sometimes I think, 'I could have had millions if I stayed!' but I don't make music for money any more. It's not that I'm rich. After my divorce, I hit rock bottom. But I've made money from my solo career because the royalties are coming in for songs like Real to Me. Besides, if I'd stayed in Westlife I'd never have had my first solo records or met Delta, and these are the things that matter to me now, apart from my kids." Indeed. And given that Brian loves his children very much and says they haven't been damaged by the marriage break-up because "they get so much love from all sides", he feels duty-bound to reject a story that appeared in this newspaper. It suggested that he is worried about his children in relation to Kerry's current husband Mark Croft and her mother's recent claim that she is "an out-of-control coke head". Brian insists, "No, the guy she's with is a good man and the kids have a great nanny, so they're safe." He claims he did once warn Kerry "she'd have to go to a clinic for her coke problem" or he'd "take the kids", and says "she's not doing coke any more". But does McFadden even talk to his former wife these days? "No." Not even for the sake of the children? "If I had to speak to her, I would, for the kids." But why, as is obvious, is Brian so angry at Kerry? "Because she screwed me, she screwed my career by lying and she knew it was destroying my career and let it happen," he responds, before returning to the story that he's supposed to have ditched Katona during a phone call. "What actually happened is that I was in New York, she'd taken the kids and was living with her mum. She phoned me and asked, 'Do you love me any more?' I said, 'No, not like I did at the start.' She said, 'Neither do I, we have to end it.' I said, 'You're right,' left it at that, then got another call, saying, 'I've spoken to Max [Clifford, the famous publicist], I'm having a press conference to say we're separating, I want to move on with my life,' and to tell you the truth I felt relieved, though I felt sad for the children. "But after that press conference she phoned again and said, 'I'm having nothing to do with this, you're the one leaving me, I'm not agreeing we're breaking up, I don't want to break up.' I said, 'So are we getting back together?' She said, 'No.' But those first press stories said it was a mutual decision. Yet then the Star knocked on her front door, gave her flowers, said, 'We're sorry to hear about your marriage break-up,' and in front of all the paparazzi and journalists she said, 'Don't forget, he left me, I didn't leave him,' and the line they used was, 'I didn't want to break up.' "I didn't mind at first. Yet then it spiralled into what it did. All of a sudden it's, 'He done me over the phone, rang from New York, said he didn't love me any more, wanted to break up.' Then came the stories I was with other women." Was Brian? "I was, like f**k!" Didn't he even have sex with one of those four female pop stars who were, potentially libellously, named inthe tabloids? "None of them! Then another story said I was gay,going out with some person. But I didn't sleep with oneperson after I broke up with Kerry, didn't kiss one girl, didn't even go out and talkto a girl. I was just thinking, 'I have the kids to sort out. The last thing I need is another girl I have problems with.' So I withdrew." So how did Delta enter the story? Actually, at first Brian "didn't know about her history on Neighbours or that she'd sold a million albums in England." He just needed "the right voice" for Almost Here, a song he'd written, heard her sing Lost without You, realised hers was that voice, sent her a recording with the song and she agreed to do the duet. "But Delta and I were rumoured to be together even though we met only that once to do the duet and didn't see each other for three months!" he says. "And Kerry was at that recording session. She met Delta, saw she was a nice girl. And actually at the time, she had no hair because she was going through chemo. [Delta was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2003] But I too just thought, 'She is a nice girl.'" Yet while they were recording Almost Here didn't Brian get any kind of romantic buzz, any sense that he was attracted to Delta? "No" he says, categorically. "I was going through the end of a marriage and, even at that stage - just before Kerry and I broke up, though our marriage had been gone for six months - I wouldn't even humour the thought of another woman. Besides, Delta was dating [the tennis player] Mark Philippoussis. But I've written a song for my next album and it came out of something she said when we were recording Almost Here. Her mother had said to me, 'Mark wants to marry her. She's only 19, tell her not to get married.' So I did tell Delta, 'Don't marry the guy just because he asked you. You're too young and obviously you're not happy.' But she'd noticed I wasn't either, and said,'What about you? You're not happy.' Then I said, 'But my life is set in stone,' and you know what Delta said? 'Nothing is set in stone.' "That's what the song is about. But she wasn't being romantic. She was being defensive, thinking, 'Who is this guy? How dare he talk to me like that?' Yet that is when I began to think, 'Maybe I don't have to stay in this. OK, we're seen as this golden couple, it's not supposed to end because of the kids, but I am f**king unhappy, drinking every day, she doesn't love me any more, we don't have a sex life, I can get out of this.' And Kerry felt the same way." Not long afterwards, Brian got that phone call in New York. However, "things didn't get romantic" for himself and Delta until Ireland on Sunday ran a story that annoyed him at the time but later led to the couple becoming lovers. "They had a headline, 'Is Delta the reason for Brian and Kerry's split-up?' and after that Delta called me to say even journalists in Australia were ringing her to ask about the story and we just laughed at the whole idea, but that's how our friendship began!" he says. "I didn't meet her again until we shot the video and then the world's paparazzi were trying to get even one shot of us to increase the story. But we didn't get together until later, when we were promoting the single. At one point, our friendship became so close we just looked at each other and realised, 'This is it!' "Then, after we sang together on the royal performance and had a few drinks, we kissed for the first time. That's when everything fell into place for me. And it's not just that Delta loves me. Or I love her. Our love for music is the same and we are so creative as a couple. Our sitting room has a TV, grand piano, guitars and that's it! Everything is about making music. We wake up in the morning, start singing, or write a song. I've actually written 150 songs in the past two years, one will be my new single, and then I'll choose 12 for my second album. So life is great!"! Meaning, maybe, that Brian McFadden is happier now than he's ever been? "Absolutely, on all levels," he says. "And I think everything is going to get better. I hit the low then ended up higher than ever before. And even though people say success is about how many albums you sell, how many number ones you have, to me it's about someone saying, 'I love that song you wrote'and about being creative. That's what I am, now, whereas in Westlife there was no room to be creative, nothing to create for." Speaking of creativity, I had better end by asking Brian one shamelessly obvious question. Earlier he described his marriage to Kerry as his "first" so is he secretly married to Delta and, eh, creating their own kids! "No! But what the f**k is it about Ireland that as soon as two people get together they're asked, 'When are you getting married?" he responds, laughing. "You are the fourth Irish journalist in a row to ask, 'So, wedding bells?' But if we're getting married, Joe, we'll let you know!" © Joe Jackson Brian McFadden's single 'Only a Woman' is out next month Joe Jackson *taken from Brians Myspace page