Ronan holiday

Ronan Keating talks to VICKI ANDERSON about losing a bandmate, his Kiwi pals, and fresh challenges.

His Irish eyes might be smiling but Ronan Keating's voice has a definite quaver when he speaks about the loss of band mate and the man he treated as a little brother, Stephen Gately.

Gately, 33, died on October 10 last year while on holiday in Majorca as a result of a pulmonary oedema, or fluid in the lungs.

"I've never known anything like it. It is still very raw in all of our lives. To lose someone so young, so quickly like that. All you can do is just put one foot in front of the other, you have to keep going and just try to get through as best you can."

Despite rumours of the group cancelling the upcoming Boyzone album Brother, Keating says it will be released on March 8 and is a tribute to Gately. It contains two songs sung by Gately, one of which is the lead single Gave It All Away, which was written by Mika.

"Making this Boyzone record has been a good focus for us, we can feel his memory - he was with us in the studio recording the album. It's a tribute to him. I would like to set up a foundation for him, so his memory lives on."

Keating reveals that Brother is a markedly different album to anything the group has done before. "It's incredibly different. There are no ballads on there at all, it is very much an adult pop record, big Coldplay, U2 style songs. There are no cover versions, they are all brand new studio tracks. It's going to surprise a lot of people."

He laughs heartily when I ask him to explain Gately's name for him - Straw Balls.

"Yes, he used to sometimes call me that, it's an Irish thing really. It's just a name people give each other. 'How's it going, Straw Balls?' It's a real Dublin thing."

Touring New Zealand and Australian wineries as part of the popular A Day on the Green series, Keating is enjoying the opportunity to partake of his favourite drink, red wine, and hopes to also indulge another passion, golf. "I've been touring these vineyards for a couple of weeks and it's been very civilised, there's a lovely atmosphere at these gigs. It's a different thing for me and I've enjoyed it. I'm looking to hit a few golf courses in New Zealand, too."

Is he as squeaky clean as his image suggests?

"People always think if you come from a boy band you're very straitlaced, but I'm just a human being at the end of the day. That whole goody two shoes thing is a bit old really."

Although he was in New Zealand last year for the final of Dancing With the Stars, this is his first tour of New Zealand since 2004.

His sets here will consist of "the songs people want, lots of new stuff and I'll perform a few things I haven't played in a while. I also have a string quartet with me on tour, so it's really beautiful".

While here he also hopes to catch up with an old mate. "I don't know how busy he is, but it would be good to meet up with Jonah Lomu while I'm in town, he's a good pal of mine."

Another chum is Hayley Westenra, who performed a duet with Keating which appeared on the pair's respective Christmas albums.

"She's a great lady. The song It's Only Christmas I wrote a long time ago. It was on the shelf until I made a Christmas record. I never wrote it as a duet and it became one and I have to say it's one of my favourite songs on the album, I love it." As well as his Christmas album, Winter Songs, last year he released his fifth solo album, Songs For My Mother.

It is fair to say that Keating's devoted fanbase is made up largely of women. Although he doesn't have any stalkers that he knows about, there are some fans who spend their lives following him around the world.

"Yes, there are some real diehards out there, I don't knock that in any way."

Keating joined Boyzone at 16 and in his career to date has sung for Prince Charles, performed for the Pope twice and made the Guinness Book of Records for being the only artist ever to have 30 consecutive top 10 singles in the UK chart. He is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador via the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Passionate about raising the awareness of cancer, he organises fundraising events to raise money for the Marie Keating Foundation in honour of his mother, who died of breast cancer in 1998. He has run the London Marathon, walked the length of Ireland twice, holds charity balls and has even climbed Mt Kilimanjaro.

A keen golfer, he is putting together a series of golf events and is planning another lengthy walk of Ireland. "I'm up for a challenge."

As the man himself admits, he's not just a "goody two shoes" and has also stripped bare for Cosmopolitan and there's a Guinness ad where the sponsor's product is all he's wearing.

Keating's newest role is as DJ on London's easy listening station Magic 105.4 FM where his dulcet Irish tones grace the 2pm Sunday timeslot. "It's gone incredibly well, thank God. The ratings have been huge."

Married to Irish model Yvonne Connolly the couple have three children - Jack, 10, Marie, 9, and Ali, 4, and when not on tour Keating can be found doing the school run.

"I get up at 7.30am, some days Yvonne gets up - we pass the baton. I make the lunches, brush the teeth, do their hair, then I pick them up at 2.30pm, then it's football, ballet dancing. I'm a taxi service. No matter who you are or what you do children bring you right back down to earth again."

If Jack decides he wants to be in a boy band in six years, what advice would he offer him?

"If he just wants to do it to be famous I won't be impressed. If he wants to do it because he loves it and is good at it then that's different."

With a parting farewell of "God bless", Straw Balls is gone.

A Day On The Green, featuring Ronan Keating, The Peter Urlich Sextet, Matt Joe Gow at Mud House Winery, Waipara, tonight.

- © Fairfax NZ News