About A Boy
He was the cheeky chappy in Boyzone, the cheery one with the boy next door personality. Then the band broke up and he didn’t know what to do with his life. So Keith Duffy did what nobody expected: he became a well-regarded actor and soap star. As he prepares to make his debut with the acclaimed Druid Theatre company, he speaks frankly about his quest for meaning in life, the controversial break-up of Boyzone in 2000, their successful reunion and Stephen Gately’s tragic death.
Olaf Tyaransen, 16 Nov 2011
Describe the scene.
It’s gas, because being in a boyband wouldn’t have been the most hip thing back in the ‘90s, and most blokes our age would kind of throw stones at us or slag us off. It just wasn’t cool to be in a boyband, especially coming from such a rock-renowned country with the likes of Therapy? and U2 and Sinéad O’Connor, and obviously now you’ve got The Script and The Coronas and The Blizzards – we’re such a rock ‘n’ roll country. And going through the airport – on our own we could kind of dart, put the baseball cap on and get away from the grief, but when we were together it was a nightmare, and for years we’d have stag dos and hen parties in airports… the hen parties would be dying to get photos and they’d be all over us, but the stag dos would just be ripping the shit out of us. So, we were going through the airport at about half four in the morning. The people we were going to meet in the Wright Venue found out what happened and they all arrived back at my house, so there was about 200 people at my house, but myself, Shane and Mikey locked ourselves – we have a little bar in the garden – we locked ourselves in there sipping whiskey, just to get our heads together about what we were going to do. We were walking through security, and obviously all the plasma screens in the airport had breaking news – “Stephen Gately is dead” – and we were all very emotional. But there was about 30 guys on a stag do, on the righthand side walking down towards the A gates or the B gates, and Shane looked at me and I looked at him and Mikey looked at us… (laughs) The three of us said nothing but it was all, “If these fuckers say anything, let’s just hammer them!” We didn’t give a fuck, we knew we’d get locked up, but under the circumstances we’d be out and we’d be on the next plane. We’ve walked away from these pricks all our lives, let’s just dive in. Honest to god, we walked past the 30 of them and every single one just went, “How are ya, lads? Sorry lads...” It was amazing. It made us worse. It made
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Olaf Tyaransen
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