The Blindboy Podcast - Keith Duffy

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

I chat with Keith Duffy. Singer and actor, about his career in Boyzone, Coronation Street and Boyzlife. We also open up about the time we both accidentally watched a man masturbate to completion in Edinburgh in 2013 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cast dispersions on the carbstones you grown Tonys. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm currently operating on two hours of sleep because I had an interesting night. I was in bed and I heard a very loud bang and it immediately woke me up. But the severity of the bang was such that I didn't wake up rationrationally I didn't wake up

and think something must have fallen something must have fallen and that's why there was a loud bang no I woke up in a state of utter threat and I assumed that there is someone in the house who wants to kill me and now I have to kill them first. So immediately I jumped out of bed and grabbed the nearest object, which was a large, a large candle that smells like linen that I bought in TK Maxx. And then I didn't want to turn the lights on

because I needed to use the darkness. I needed the darkness as, to give me the upper hand. On my assassin. So I wandered my house. I skulked my house. Completely nude. In the pitch dark.

Navigating the hallways. Not with my eyes. But by listening to the. The clammy sound of my bare feet. On the wood floors. And kitchen tiles, like this. That type of noise. And I kind of knew where I was depending on the sound of my feet. And I was in an interesting state. It was almost like sleep paralysis, but I was walking.

sleep paralysis but I was walking so I can only describe it as being definitely half asleep but also having a bit of a panic attack and after about it was probably three minutes but it felt like a half an hour after about three minutes I kind of came out of it

and turned on the lights and I'm just like completely nude, in my kitchen, holding a linen scented TK Maxx candle, and then I kind of woke up and went, right, there's not an assassin in my house, I went back up to bed,

and realised that, a mirror in my room, a large mirror, had fallen onto the ground, and that's why there was such a loud thud, that woke me up, but it was loud enough, A mirror in my room, a large mirror, had fallen onto the ground. And that's why there was such a loud thud that woke me up. But it was loud enough to send me into temporary psychosis, I suppose you'd call it. Utter panic.

There is an assassin here to kill me. Sent by Leo Varadkar. Because I retweeted some alarming housing statistics. So that was like 2am. And I couldn't go back to sleep after that. I couldn't. It was just no way. My adrenaline was too high after that. Even after seeing

it's just a fucking mirror. A mirror fell down. It's nothing. You can go back to sleep. The shock of it woke me up and it's like you are not getting back to sleep buddy. Not after it woke me up. And it's like, you are not getting back to sleep, buddy. Not after that. So now I'm a tired boy. I'm not going to be too hard on myself over it.

Loud bangs in the middle of the night are never good. Not when they wake you up. That's never a... That's never pleasant. You never want that. But in general, you tend to assume that something fell over. That's the first assumption.

My brain didn't want to go there. It wants to go for assassin. But fear not, because I have an absolutely fantastic podcast for you this week. Last Tuesday at my live podcast in Vicar Street, I got to speak to Keith Duffy, who is someone I've been admiring and fascinated with for a long time. Keith Duffy was in a boy band called Bison in the 90s

and they were an Irish boy band who were absolutely fucking gigantic in Ireland and the UK in particular. They've had nine UK number one singles at a time when that was incredibly difficult. I'm using the word UK there in a context specific way referring to the

UK charts. I tend to try not use the word UK if I can because people who are living in Scotland the north of Ireland, Wales some people don't like the term UK. They don't feel like they're part of a united kingdom. So apologies to those people. I hope you understand the context specific way I'm using that term.

They were huge. They were one direction huge. Massive. And I suppose the only reason I'm explaining it is if you're in Ireland or England, Scotland, Wales, you know who boys on are. I don't need to tell you. But I don't think they were huge in Canada or the United States. So for my listeners in Canada and the US, think like NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys. So here are the reasons I wanted to speak with Keith and I was so excited to do so. So here are the reasons I wanted to speak with Keith and I was so excited to do so. I met Keith in like 2013, 2014.

I was doing a gig in Edinburgh on St. Patrick's Day and I was doing this gig with half of Bison and Keith was there. So I was a child in the 90s. So meeting Keith Duffy as an adult I couldn't believe it I was completely starstruck this was an unbelievably famous person to me this was someone who was as famous as fucking Bart Simpson and what I was struck with back in 2013 was how genuinely nice he was as a person not in a forced way he just struck me as an incredibly

decent, humble individual who was nice to everybody everybody he met on the night he was just nice to them for the sake of being nice and I couldn't believe that someone who was this famous, who had accomplished so much

was so fucking genuinely humble and completely unaffected or changed in any way by fame because I've been doing this job a long time now and I've met a lot of famous people and unfortunately quite a lot of famous people are damaged by fame itself. They don't come across like real people because they're not treated like real people. They're treated like golden statues. So when you meet really famous people, the ones that still manage to maintain a sense of genuine humanity, they can be quite rare. of genuine humanity. They can be quite rare.

And I can still meet famous people who are friendly and nice and kind, but they've lost contact with who they really are. They have become the spectacle. They've become what other people project on them. And it can be uncomfortable to be around because it's odd. There's no rules for that. So when I first met Keith Keith and he's just this

lovely kind friendly person for the sake of it it left a real impression on me it left a real mark on me and in my mind I kind of tried to keep him as a little role model in my head because I do gigs and I go on TV and I do all these things that have notoriety attached to them. Now thankfully I've got my plastic bag to protect me from a lot of that shit. But I still have to be very mindful. I have to be incredibly mindful that I don't lose contact with who I am. And that I never treat another person differently. Even if that person is treating me differently because they saw me on the internet

or the telly or up on stage or whatever. And one trick to that is you just focus on the fucking work. You focus on the work and you tell yourself all this is is a job. It's a fucking job and you do it and do it to your best ability and then go home to bed and wake up nude in the kitchen holding a linen candle from TK Maxx. So I've always wanted Keith Duffy on the podcast for that reason. I wanted to speak to this nice, humble, friendly man. Because I figured it'd be a good listen. The other reason I wanted Keith on is because he has genuinely achieved so much.

And I don't think he gets credit or respect for it. Not only was he in Buy Zone. He's like. He's a singer, a dancer. And he was a successful actor. Keith Duffy acted in Coronation Street for four fucking years. And he was good at it. And if you're thinking.

Oh sure he was Keith Duffy in Buy Zone. Of course he got a job on Coronation Street that's easy and probably you know being well known already definitely would have helped him to get a job on Coronation Street but that's not going to keep you there

for four years talent and hard work does he's also in a new band called Boy's Life with Brian McFadden who was in Westlife. And you just have to respect that. They're doing loads of gigs.

They're selling them out. They've got an album full of originals coming out. I doubt they need to do it. They want to do it. Keith Duffy just likes fucking working and getting out there and gigging. But also another reason is. Unfortunately. Like being a boy band in the 90s like bison everyone knows who buys on word they were huge but they don't get respect

bison i don't think boys don't get respect in ireland and often boys are kind of treated as a little bit of a joke and i find that quite unfair. When Bison are interviewed in particular in Irish media at any point that I can remember they're kind of presented as a novelty they're presented as a lot of lads who like won the fucking lottery and you don't have to be into Bison's fucking music like I'm not the target audience for Bizone's music. Bizone didn't make music for me, but still I admire and respect what they've done. It's awesome, I'm in awe of it. Nine UK number ones, stadium tours, being an integral part of the cultural zeitgeist.

That's unbelievably difficult and it's not fair to call it luck or to say that it just happened because oh they're good looking lads no there's loads of boy bands loads and loads and loads of boy bands there's only one fucking boy zone

so I wanted to give Keith a space to tell us that fucking story from his own lived experience and to give Keith a space to tell us that fucking story from his own lived experience and to give him the respect that that deserves. Not to do it in a tongue-in-cheek way, with a wink and a nod. To literally go, you've done something fucking amazing. Please tell us about it. And another thing worth mentioning, around boy bands in particular.

A lot of critique around boy bands is actually a form of misogyny because not misogyny towards the lads in the fucking band but the majority audience for boy bands is teenage girls

and the reason boy bands aren't given any respect is because of fucking hipster gatekeepers who decide what real music is. This is real music and this is for lads. And anything that teenage girls might enjoy has to be shit. Therefore it's shit. And I'm not into that. I'm not into invalidating the experience of millions of people

just because they're fucking teenage girls. What boy bands try to do is they try to entertain. We're going to make pop music and this pop music is going to be very, very entertaining. And we're not trying to make music that's difficult or that challenges the boundaries of what music is. That's not what we're doing we're here to be as entertaining as we possibly can and just because you don't like it doesn't mean that

it's shit because there are millions of people who think that this is absolutely amazing and it can define it can define people's fucking childhoods and give people huge degrees of meaning so I think that deserves as much respect as any other fucking genre of music what's different is the criteria of the critique don't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree and one example I do want to give actually there because I said that often the purpose of boy band type music is not to challenge music itself there's one notable example I can think of, only one example I can think of where like a boy band style singer

released a song that was deeply unconventional and actually did challenge music and that's a song called Rock On by David Essex from 1973 he just came out with this fucking song that's unlike anything before it

and unlike anything that was being released at the time just this really weird single that it was like post rock or post punk before fucking post-punk. It almost sounded like kraut rock. And that's the one example I can think of of a boy band type singer

just releasing this really challenging piece of music that wasn't really trying to entertain the listener. It was trying to challenge the listener. Even though it's a bit of a banger. That's Rock On by David Essex. and possibly as well the career of Scott Walker but I'm unsure on that one Scott Walker in the early 60s was very much

a heartthrob poster boy singer and then he just progressively released some of the most difficult fucking challenging music that you've ever heard especially his later career but I'm unsure if Scott Walker fits that exact definition another reason I wanted Keith Duffy

on this podcast was because of the huge work that he has done since the early 2000s in raising awareness around autism he has relentlessly used his platform to destigmatise and to raise awareness for autism and to make autism something that was being spoken about in people's homes where it wasn't

being spoken about before. And when I announced that Keith was going to be my guest in Vicar Street, I got so many mails from parents parents of autistic kids who just wanted me to thank him for all that work that he's done, so this was a fantastic chat I had with Keith, it was an unbelievably fun night, the audience were fucking magnificent, it was a pleasure to be there

I loved doing it, and a tiny bit of housekeeping before I get into it I've got two more fucking Vicar Street gigs on the 5th of April and the 12th of April coming up and there's only a handful of tickets left for both of these gigs the pandemic meant that I had two months to

plug and promote three Vicar Street gigs which is quite difficult so please come along to my Vicar Street Dublin gigs on the 5th of April and the 12th of April I'm going to have fantastic guests and it's going to have fantastic guests and it's going to be a load of crack

they're lovely Tuesday night gigs you can come along, sit down, listen to some wonderful chat you don't have to get rat arsed, you'll be up ready for work the next morning with a clear head. Keith Duffy doesn't do a lot of interviews, especially in Ireland and one thing I'd like to request is

most likely some newspaper is going to take a quote out of this podcast some Irish newspaper and they'll turn the quote into an article about something Keith said I've spoken about this before for some reason traditional media like radio or print newspapers they don't like to acknowledge that independent podcasts exist. I think it's because they're threatened by the podcast space. They see it as competition. But if you are going to quote something

from this podcast and put it into a newspaper, please credit my podcast, The Blind Boy Podcast. Unfortunately, before, newspapers have quoted guests on my podcast and just said, such and such said on a podcast this week. That's happened more than once with my podcast where a guest has

been quoted and the newspaper doesn't mention my podcast. Please don't do that. If you're going to quote content from this podcast, please cite the Blind Boy podcast because you wouldn't do it if it was another newspaper or a radio station. That would be unthinkable. You wouldn't say, such and such said on a radio station. You'd credit the radio station. So please credit this podcast

if you're taking any of this content and putting it into an article. So here's my interview with Keith Duffy. We spoke about the origins of Bi's own. We spoke about Bi's life. And here's a bit of clickbait for you when I was gigging in Edinburgh with Keith

in 2013, we accidentally watched a man masturbate to completion, so we speak about that story in great detail so there's your bit of clickbait how you doing? Keith fucking Duffy. Nice to see you.

You were in Boy's Own. You were in Boy's Life. You were in Coronation Street. You were in Fair City. You've done a lot, Keith. The Jack of all trades, the master of none, maybe. And you still look Fair City. You've done a lot, Keith. Jack of all trades, master of none, maybe. And you still look about 23. Thanks very much.

But like, I think it's hard for us to appreciate in Ireland just boys on our, we're so big that it's hard for us to appreciate the achievements that ye did. Like ye had, was it nine number ones in the UK? Something like that, yeah.

We had about, I think we had 25 top three hits in the UK. And we had eight number one albums and I think nine number one singles. And that's when that shit was really difficult. Yeah, that's when... When it meant something. There was no downloading. You couldn't be in a boy band from Ireland.

Do you know what I mean? They don't fucking play instruments. They're gobshites, you know? They're not talented at all. What the fuck are they? I could do that. Do you know what I mean? And that's what happened.

There was a whole kind of railroad of boy bands getting together in Dublin. Once they saw us on this massive show in the UK back in 93, and we won the Best New Band on the Road Award, and it was all over the tv and the radio and and press in ireland um you know we didn't get home that often back then but when we did there was there was boy bands everywhere and they couldn't understand why they weren't fucking famous they're going well you fucking did it so why can't we do it i don't know there's a bit of work to be done lads you know but before that right so you come from Danamed I do like what was what was

your childhood like in Danamed and when did you figure out fuck it I'm creative I'm an artist I'm a performer well my dad God rest him um was a great musician and I grew up watching my dad performing quite a lot my mother would be involved in the local amateur dramatics or, you know, panto at Christmas or whatever. There was always instruments around the house. My brothers played guitar. I never picked up the guitar. It didn't interest me.

In fact, I put a hammer through my dad's guitar when I was about four. So I was never allowed to pick up a guitar again. And they bought me a drum kit instead. So I ended up being in the Dublin All-Stars marching band for a few years and then I got into the kit and I played in a couple of rock bands before I never wanted to be in a boy band by the way I wanted to be a drummer in a rock band I wanted the whole fucking sex drugs and rock and roll I didn't want this squeaky clean image with a

fucking manager telling me that I couldn't have a girlfriend you know what I mean that shit went wrong but um no I you know i loved watching my dad on stage watching him singing my dad was a very small man myself my brothers are kind of our big lads and my dad was a small man but and quite skinny so you'd see the veins on his neck popping out when he'd be hitting the high notes what was he singing what type of tunes well he did everything i mean in the in later days he did everything from oasis to to the verve and so was he doing this for a few quid? This wasn't like...

Ah, no, it was amateur, you know. I mean, he might get a few quid. It might have been paid in a few pints, depending on where he was playing. I mean, he was in the show band era, and he was in a band back in those days, back in the 70s. It was in a band called The Kestrels and Brandy.

And they got a bit of traction. They got a couple of residencies. I think they had a residency in George Street. They had a residency out in Bray. So, I mean, they were enjoying what they were doing. The talent in Ireland is phenomenal for the size of our population. You know, you look at the pockets of talent

around the country compared, and the success, the international success that we have compared to countries with much bigger populations than us. It's quite bizarre. Even when you look at the UK the bands that were really important, they're all Irish. Yes, exactly.

The Beatles. But like the Beatles, the Beatles are an Irish fucking band. Like even the Sex Pistols men. The Smiths men. The guitar player in the Smiths, his name is John Mather. Morrissey's name is Stephen Patrick Morrissey. Do you know what I mean? But even like the Sex Pistols, his name was John Lydon. Like his ma was from Tip. And I consider that song, God Save the Queen. That's not a punk song. That's a rebel song. That's in the

tradition of the fucking Wolftones. But it's in our culture, like music is part of who we are as Irish people. Yeah, we were an oppressed nation for years and I think we entertained ourselves and that kind of drags on through our kids and our parents passed it on to us. Getting on stage is a scary thing. Like going from someone who's not on stage to then deciding I'm okay to be on a stage is frightening. But you growing up

seeing your dad doing it and seeing your ma doing it, it made it feel a little bit normal for you. No, it never changes. Out of all the guests I've had on this podcast and I've interviewed

like butchers, you're one of the most nervous about coming up and just talking. And I'm like, Keith, man, you were in Bison. It's not that. It's. And I'm like, Keith, man, you're wearing bison. It's not that.

It's not that I'm nervous. It's just that you always want to make sure that you give a good performance. And it's that, you know, you have to be aware that people have paid good money to come and see you.

So you want to make sure that you're giving them the best version of yourself. So, you know, my dad always said, a true performer will always get nervous before they go out on stage. So I'm glad I'm not a fucking butcher i'm glad i get nervous because it keeps

me aware of myself and and make sure we don't lose the run of ourselves you know because we've both met many people in this business that get the kind of success that we've been lucky and graced with and well you not me it does well see you're... I had a little song called Horse Outside in 2010, lads. You couldn't walk into a men's room in the country without someone mentioning it for two months. I still talk to you about it. No, but like I said, my dad always said, you know, the sign of a true performer

is somebody that always gets nervous because they go on. Because nerve is adrenaline. Adrenaline gets you excited. The excitement gives you the energy and the energy gives you the performance and and that's what you want to try and do every night of the week and if you're performing and like we did myself and brian did about 68 gigs between september and december last year and we said fuck it it's what we do we'll do it you know absolutely we'll do it yeah it was tough i'm not gonna I mean, eight and a half hours. And this is Buys Life now.

This is a little thing. So this is you and Brian McClendon. Yeah. Yeah. I love the name. Well, I mean, it was very clever, wasn't it? We were going to go with it. But it's great.

It's like, let's not pretend here. No, no, no. He was in Westlife and I was in Buys Zone. All right. We know it. So we're calling it Buyzone and you're going to have to deal with that. We were going to call it Westzone,

but that was already a fucking car park at Dublin Airport. No, but honestly, we had no idea that it was going to get as successful as it's become. How the fuck do you go from... Because you and Shane Lynch grew up close to's become. How the fuck do you go from,

because you and Shane Lynch grew up close to each other. Yeah. How do you go from that to all of a sudden auditioning for a, how the fuck do you end up in Buyzone? How do you end up in Buyzone? I don't think we really knew what we were trying to achieve. I mean, we certainly didn't know what success was.

I think we were both at loose ends. Shane was working as a mechanic for his dad at the time. And although he loves cars and all the business, he was working a long week. I wasn't really doing an awful lot at the time. I had started an architectural course in Finglas, like a post-leaving cert course. And I never went in, to be honest. I was hanging out in town most of the time living in a little flat on Mary Street doing things that I probably shouldn't have been doing doing things

that I probably shouldn't have been doing is what I said but the the pod nightclub was kind of brought into Dublin it was the first time

that we had a real nightclub with a proper DJ and mixing music rather than a disco where we dance around the fucking handbag you know

so we had all those places in Dublin for years. So you were going to the pod and raving, listening to raving. Going to the pod and raving, having different DJs coming in. John Reynolds,

God rest him, who started the pod, he had managed Ministry of Sound in London for years and he had kind of adopted the idea. You know,

it was the first time that you had heterosexuals and homosexuals coming together and partying together and everybody got dressed up really cool and John Richmond style gear and it was a real good night out and I was probably too young to be in there at the time but I knew a couple of people and we got on the guest list or whatever and I just remember going in there and thinking it was amazing and I was in there dancing one night

and myself and Shane actually dancing by yourselves like in the crowd like no no I was on my own I wasn't with Shane

I mean Shane and I knew each other from the gym there was a gym across on Moore Street called what was it called Unique Physique

on Moore Street and this is a true story and Shane grew up the road from me and I had a big crush on his older sister Alison he had five sisters and I is a true story and Shane grew up the road for me and I had a big crush on his older sister Alison he had five sisters and I had a crush on all of them eventually but at this time

it was Alison you know so I trained with Shane in the gym in town in Mursery and Shane was 16 and I was 17 or 18 and this girl came into the gym one day this really pretty blonde girl and the two of us kind of noticed her.

She got our attention and she came over to us and another guy called Mark Daly, I believe his name was. He was from Bald Oil and the three of us were in pretty good nick. I played a lot of Gaelic football in Ireland so we were in pretty good nick.

But anyway, she asked us did we want to be male strippers? And at the time, I was working in Frawley's on Thomas Street because my father was a manager up there, and it was a bit of extra work, a bit of extra cash and stuff. But it wasn't a lot of money, you know, and my folks didn't have a lot. So extra money. So I said to her, you know, being the businessman out of the three of us,

I said, how much do we get? And I said, and how far down do you want us to dress, undress? She said, listen, it's 15 minutes. It's over in some place in the south side called the Seventh Lock or something like this. And it's 300 women. It's ladies night. You can't go wrong. So I said,

number one, my mother being quite a respectful Bible basher, I didn't think that she'd approve. So maybe not tell her would be the obvious answer. And she said she'd give us 50 quid punt back in those days. We'd give you 50. That's a lot. 50 punt each, so 150 quid.

For 15 minutes. So we kind of thought, wow. So she gave us these three red leather G-strings and told us to pick an outfit out of this box you know so Shane went as a priest and I went as fucking Santa Claus and it wasn't even Christmas Santa was coming twice that year so now you have to take into account we were only kids right that's not making it better at all that's not that it better at all.

That's not, that's, if there's one thing that Keith could have said right there that makes it worse, is, oh, G-string dressed up as Santa Claus, but I was a child. It's just, listen, I didn't ever, I never expected to tell this story, so I kind of... We're at the Blind By Podcast here.

Listen, anyway... So how did it go we did we did what we had to do right we we never did it again we did what we had to do but we taught honestly when we were finished we thought we were superstars yeah and there was a nightclub over in Tala at the time called Cocos and uh myself and Shane were like we we were wearing what we wore, right? And we had to dress down to our G-string. But we had to get volunteers there with the audience to come up and gyrate with us and dance with us on one thing and another, you know? And when a gang of girls are there together,

they've got loads of confidence. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The problem was we didn't realize that we were a little bit too young for the gig and we probably got more excited than they did. And wearing a red leather g-string that doesn't look good

children on the horn children on a horn at a hen party jeez we nearly took somebody's eye out once how did that end up being bison

because that's where he's going with it so no that was the first time Shane and I um I'd kind of worked together we went back to um we went back to Coco's nightclub and we were wearing I remember we were wearing like white jeans and a black leather waistcoat with like a vest underneath but shortly after being in Coco's the vest came off and we all and they had the waist coat on thinking we were cool you know dancing around the place posing

thinking we were wonderful and the press were there that night doing shots and they took a shot of myself and Shane holding this girl up across our arms and like my mum and dad

thought it was in my mate's house having a sleepover do you know what I mean anyway the next day I remember the next day was a Saturday and I was working up

at Frawley's in Thomas Street it's well gone now but Frawley's in Thomas Street. It's well gone now. Frawley's was there for over 115 years. But I went into the boys' changing room at lunchtime and there was a guy, George Matthews, sitting reading the newspaper. And he opened a page where Frawley's had taken a full-page ad,

which would have been my dad that had organised a full-page ad. But on the backside of the page was me and Shane, tops off holding up this girl going, Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch haven't done mail stripping in the seven lock. Come back to Cocos for an after show party. You know, Jesus Christ. And George says to me, because my dad was like the manager, so kind of the boss.

And he just said, you're dead. Your dad's going to kill you. You know, when I think of it now, I mean, honestly, God, my poor parents. But anyway, myself and Shane, you know your dad's gonna kill you you know when I think of it now I mean honestly God my poor parents but anyway myself and Shane you know like I say that's what we knew

of each other we did it once we never did it again we trained in the gym regularly but I saw him on the front page of the Herald with Colin Farrell

and a guy called Mark I can't remember his name with a line dancing sorry line dancing well Colin was doing line dancing at the time but Colin and Shane

Louis Walsh had basically got a front page of the Herald going the Ireland are making their own Irish take that okay yeah yeah and these were the first

three members of the band and it was Shane Colin Farrell and this guy Mark fuck off I didn't know that Colin Farrell was one of

the original members of the band I didn't did you know that I didn't know that put Colin Farrell was one of the original members of the band. I didn't, did you know that? I didn't know that. Put it in Google and you'll see. Yeah,

God loved me really fucked up there, didn't he? I'd say he's shitting himself now. What a big mistake in life to make, Colin.

Anyway, like I said, I, you know, I wasn't really doing an awful lot that I was happy with at the time and I knew Shane and I said to Shane I said look what's this band thing you're putting together you know do you need any more members or whatever and he said he'd put my name forward to Louis Walsh but he never did he didn't want me part of it you know he didn't want me kind of taking his you know whatever so. Nice one. So anyway, through the jigs and the reels, I was in the pod dancing one night,

and one of the speakers front stage, like on the stage, dancing away, and this guy starts kind of pulling at me jeans, going, come here, I want to talk to you. I thought it was a bouncer. I said, yeah, what have I done? And he said, I want to talk to you inside. They had this kind of, it was the railway arches on Harcourt Street so they had this kind of VIP room that that I always kind of wanted to get in because you always I met I remember one night seeing Polly Yates and and Michael Hutchins going in there and

yeah you know God rest them but so many people that you know I was kind of a fat of the U2 lads were always in there and he said do you want to go inside and I said no I wouldn't get in there and so he brought me into the to the VIP room and said what will you have to drink and I had a Jack Daniels and Coke and he said um can you sing and I thought uh well you know I'm offing up on the gay old karaoke machine but I said I I come from a family of singers and blah blah blah and he brought me into the back room and made me sing a few songs and that was Louis Walsh and he said come and see me on Wednesday in the Ormond Quay building in Dublin and put the band together and I said

this isn't that band with Colin and Shane, he goes yeah do you know the boys, I said yeah I know the two of them well, he goes oh that's great, that makes for a great friendship in the band and come on Wednesday but I never made it that Wednesday and we'd no more mobile phones back then, I think I was back in Mary Street on Wednesday and I

forgot, I was busy doing things I shouldn't have been doing. And my mum got in contact with me and she said, look, I've had this man on the phone, Louis Walsh. He said you let him down, you're supposed to meet him and he's very annoyed and I said, fuck, I didn't promise him anything.

And she said, well look, he really wants you to be in his band and he thinks you'd be great for it and you know I think you should go and see what you think so there was one audition

left the following Wednesday which I went to and this time it kind of I think it there was like six or seven guys initially

it was down to like 15 or 20 at this stage and I went in and that night they hired well Louis put six of us in and that night they hired, well, Louis put six of us together and that's how we kind of originated.

Mikey Graham wasn't in the band then. It was Mark Walton and Richard Rock, Dickie Rock's son. Yeah. And that line up changed after about four or five months and Mikey Graham came in

and Richie Rock and Mark Walton left and then we did nothing for a year and Louis wasn't interested and anybody else that was involved kind of fell away and we kept ourselves together and and we kind of kept pushing and and kept meeting up so you became self-motivated at that point we became self-motivated but we didn't really know what we were looking for we didn't know the business that we were in and we didn't know how to get so we didn't know what we needed to do and did you even have songs at that point?

we had recorded a couple of songs just cover versions that we had put a vocal down on because you remember that I want to bring this up but the famous Late Late performance would have been around that time or slightly afterwards and I remember Gabe Byrne

saying you don't have any songs you don't have this and I always used to get pissed off with that because it was really condescending it was like you were being laughed at

he actually Lutely was condescending and we were only babies you know we were 16, 17 the way we were treated was horrendous when I look back on it now

if anybody had done that to one of my kids I'd be fucking disgusted you know because we were let in blind I mean it was Thursday night

the night before the Friday night of the Late Late Show, that the six of us were put together. And then Louis said, the first thing you're going to do as a band is you're on the Late Late Show tomorrow night. And we said, but what are we going to do?

He said, I'll just dance or do something, he said, it'll be fine. And we honestly didn't know what to do. And Shane's sister, older sister Tara, who was lovely as well, she was a dancer and a choreographer and she had danced with Stephen Gately.

So she came out to RTE with us that night and we played that dance tune that was all over the clubs at the time. And she just kind of tried to teach us this unified dance routine and dressed us and we all brought clothes from home and we kind of

like my granny got dressed it would kill me because I don't know I wore Budweiser braces over a bare chest you know where the fuck

did you get Budweiser braces off this really good looking girl that was doing like a Budweiser kind of endorsement in a bar one night and I robbed her braces I robbed her braces that night in the bar

not later just to clarify that but I wore the Budweiser braces and I had a white vest I was in my granny's in Dunny Cairny

and I was going out to RTE and my granny ironed me jeans and she ironed me vest and then I went on without the vest

and just the braces and my granny says you little shite you here's me telling all the girls down the post office on Friday that me grandson's on the late, late show

and I see it like that with no top on after me iron in your shirt. Jesus. So yeah, she wasn't too happy. So that's how Boys' Zone started and then it kind of fell apart. Like I said, the interest kind of fell out of it then

and there was no traction. And the boys, we kind of kept ourselves going together and then I kept on pushing on Louis and ringing Louis. And Louis was very busy at the time with a band called Who's Eddie. I remember he was booking Who's Eddie

in every bar around. Absolutely huge band. Yeah. You know, when he was getting Linda Martin the odd gig or Johnny Logan, you know, he's doing Who's Eddie as well.

But Louis took a better interest then and start making phone calls and start getting people's interest. And between the jigs and the reels Richie and Mark fell apart and and Mikey came in um and even then we were getting a little bit more traction but nothing was happening um and then a girl by the name of Michelle Hockley um came and saw us performing in in um um Temple Bar in the Rock Garden. Don't know if it's still there now. And we did a gig in the Rock Garden, three songs.

And she really liked what she saw. And she said, look, I'm putting together the Smash Hits Roadshow. We've got Take That, E70 and Bad Boys Inc., EYC, PJ and Duncan, which is Ant and Dec. They were fucking huge, yeah. I remember them, man. So it was all the kind of pop groups

of the 90s were going out on tour together but they were putting in three new unsigned acts to go on as a competition for the best new band

on the road and every night in every arena people would be given a piece of paper and there was bins at the end of the arena and they would put

their piece of paper for their favourite band in whatever bin so this was market research like pretty much the arena, and they would put their piece of paper for their favorite band in whatever bin. So this was market research, like? Pretty much, but they were trying to find who their favorite act was. Yeah, yeah. There was a band called,

there was a solo singer from Australia, there was another band, two guys, two girls, like an ABBA-type thing, and there was Boyzone. And whoever won the best new act on the road got to perform at the Smash Hits poll winner's party, which is a massive show in London's East act on the road, got to perform at the Smash Hits poll winner's party, which is a massive show in London's East

End in the arena, and it goes out live on TV. And Will Smith was hosting it that year. I watched that when I was a child. He performed Boom Boom Shake the Room, and I got so excited I hit my friend Stephen into the face and I wasn't allowed to watch the rest.

I remember it. Poor old Stephen, if you hadn't have heard of him, and I wasn't allowed to watch the rest. I remember it. Poor old Stephen, if you hadn't have heard him, you would have been able to see the fact that we won the award. I missed it, yeah, because I was in trouble for hitting my friend. But looking back on it now, I did the acceptance speech.

Now, granted, we might have been together for maybe a year and a half, two years at this stage, but it was the first real thing that we ever did and at the time it was very difficult in Dublin because it wasn't cool to be in a boy band

so going back to Donny Mead there was quite a lot of bullying went on a lot of name calling went on myself and Shane struggled quite a bit we'd have to get

from Grangemoor and Donny Mead through Donny Mead through St Donna's down to Hogue Junction train station because you're not earning money at this point

no we're having a shilling but we had no outfits we used to wear our outfits on the dart to get into town to get the bus to go to the Glentys in Donegal

to some nightclub you know what I mean or down to Cove and Cork or something like that you know and at the time in Ireland around the country

they had the discos and whatever you know and we had the slow sets you know and the boys always Ireland and around the country, they had the discos and whatever, and we had the slow sets. And the boys always looked forward to the slow sets. I'm sure the girls did too, but I was a boy. But you'd pick the girl that you fancied in the room, you'd wait for the slow set, you'd walk over and you'd say,

are you getting up? Right? And if the girls did, yeah, you'd get up and you'd have the slow dance and you'd kind of reach back and see if she's any way interested and maybe a little snog, you know.

And if she reaches back as well, you kind of go across and the lips meet and then you go, oh, we'll get a kiss in here, you know, and you'd have a little snog and then the hands might drop down

and let it squeeze, you know. So you always look forward to the slow set. So these, these promoters are booking Boyzone to come in and do a performance

instead of the slow set oh no so of course the local lads are going to fucking hate us do you know what I mean so I mean

getting down to the train station was an ordeal because you'd have Shane and me wearing baseball caps sideways with like

denim fucking you know dungarees bleached white you know standing out from the crowd

big time and then you'd have the local gangs just going, look at these two gobshites, you know. And they'd rob our trainers, you know. They'd make us wear their trainers and they'd rob our trainers. I love the fact that they not only stole your shoes, but are like, you have to wear mine.

Well, I don't think they would have mind if we didn't wear theirs, but we had to wear fucking something. All right. Can you at least give me yours? Well, I don't think they would have mind if we didn't wear theirs, but we had to wear fucking something. All right. So it was, can you at least give me yours? Well, they were just thrown to the floor, so I think we just put them on. So it was tough because we were kids and I think the negative reaction that we got from

a lot of people at the time, even, so the, the poll winners party thing, we'd struggled enough to, you know, I'm thinking about it now we must have been affected in some way already at that stage because

when I look back and my kids my kids love to show me old footage and stuff and when I've

seen that video of when we're on the stage with Will Smith receiving the award you know I kind of say into the microphone

look to everybody back in Ireland we fucking made it you know like I had something to say do you know what I mean of say into the microphone, look to everybody back in Ireland, we fucking made it, you know, like I had something to say, do you know what I mean? And I was going, my God, if I thought I had shit up until then, we'd years of shit to come.

And it was like, like you said, with the condescending bit with Gay Bourne, it wasn't that we went number one in the UK with our first album and then the first two songs went number one in the charts and we're on every TV show in the UK and we're being, we're flowing into Germany

to do their big TV show and then Belgium broke for us and then into Holland and all of a sudden we didn't know what day it was we were just, we were all over the place so we never got back home to Ireland that much at all when we did eventually get home and we went back on the Late Late Show, of course Kev goes

we welcome our boys home we celebrate them you know and then it went the opposite way again after that you know because the reason i brought up that clip is one thing that pissed me off is the 25th anniversary of boys on you went back onto the late lace and they played reluctantly we did yeah yeah and they played that clip was it Torbertie was it? it was Torbertie yeah and Shane got very pissed off Shane was having none of it I kind of

I kind of you know I'm always very honest you know and I wouldn't take sides for the wrong reason I don't agree with the way Shane handled it

because as kids watching the show and I'd always be aware of what we're doing and I'd always be aware of an audience I've always been like that I have filters you know so it wouldn't have aware of an audience. I've always been like that. I have filters, you know.

So it wouldn't have been my way of reacting. I've got skins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, just burn the shit, man. But, so for that reason, you know, I have to say it was probably not right. Yeah. But I understand his frustration.

The anger. I understand the anger. Because it was disrespectful. Because, well, we were having talks with RT and they were saying, can you come home 25 years, blah, blah, blah. We'd love to. I understand the anger. Because it was disrespectful. Because, well, we were having talks with RT and they were saying, can you come home 25 years, blah, blah, blah. We'd love to have you on the show.

And we're going, do you know what? The reality is, you know, in all truth and fairness, you know, we're a small country. We have a small population,

four and a half million people. You know, the UK is 72 million. Most of our work is in the UK. Every time we come home, we get ripped apart for one reason or another. It's very difficult for us.

We've got families and kids living here. Yeah. So we try not to keep our profile up here. We'd rather just do what we're doing. You know, it doesn't make much difference financially or anything, whether we gig here or not. A lot of our dedicated Irish fans love a trip away. You know, the flight to Birmingham, the flight to Manchester, the flight to Glasgow, they'll have a weekend away with the girls. It works for everybody. So, you know, we just want to have a peaceful life you know we want this place to be this is where patriotic

very patriotic Irish people we love Ireland we love our country you know and we want we want to be at home here so if we can get rid of a little bit of profile it might be helpful

because unfortunately we didn't play instruments on stage we weren't liked people didn't know how to like us they didn't know how to pigeonhole us because we're such a rock renowned country trad renowned country great musicians you've got like got, like we said, Sinead O'Connor, U2, the Hot House Flowers, the script, you know, we've got Picture This Now and all

these up and coming great bands now. Boyzone came along and we didn't play instruments. We were a boy band. We're a pop group. People didn't like it. They didn't want Boyzone to be associated with Ireland. They didn't want us to fly the flag. You know what I mean? They wanted us out of the way. And it was very apparent. We felt that, you know, and it created a huge insecurity within us as individuals for a long time.

But we, when I... So did you feel a bit betrayed then, Keith, when the late, late bring you back to celebrate 25 years and then they bring up that clip? Well, I was very disappointed because the conversation had happened that, you know, what the Irish people hadn't seen over the years were the great successes. Because we were absolutely shite that night

on the Late Late Show. But we went on like anybody in any job that you do, you get better at it the more you do. And you were children. And you grow up and you mature and you become good at your craft and you become good at your gig. Nobody was giving us time to get good at our craft. They become good at your gig nobody was giving us time

to get good at our craft they expected us to know it overnight and it doesn't happen like that if you remember U2 back in the dandelion markets when they're starting off Bono's vocals were terrible compared to where they got to you know and and the whole band have matured and become brilliant I mean I'm a huge U2 fan but that's the way most bands happen. They mature together. They find each other's ways. Yes, in a boy band, there's two lead vocals most of the time, and then the other boys have to do backing vocals. And for my family, that was very disappointing.

For my dad especially, it was very disappointing that Mikey and Stephen sang our first single, Welcome Away Back To You, and then Ronan stepped in and Mikey stepped back. And Louis had this attitude, if it's not broken, don't fix it. a boy's own song with stephen gately and ronan keating's voice so and that's how we're getting all these number ones so i don't want the other boys coming in and he was afraid that the animal was going to get bigger than the creator so he would put us down and insult us in front of people that were our heroes to make sure that we weren't getting

too big for our boots and that we were staying grounded. But all he was doing was suppressing our talents and making us insecure. So when you did get an opportunity to shine or to sing, you didn't want to because you didn't know how to kind of perform anymore. You were beaten down. You were beaten down. So with that whole Late Late Show situation,

we were saying, look, we were flown to Modena by Pavarotti and we did a duet with Pavarotti live in front of 200,000 people. And it was amazing, you know? And we have the clip. We sang with the Bee Gees. We did words with the Bee Gees.

The Bee Gees wrote words for Elvis Presley who brought it to number three in the charts. Boyzone re-released that and we brought it to number one in the charts. Yeah. You know, and when the Bee Gees did... Thanks. And it was a lovely moment.

And we had that clip, you know? And that's ridiculous. Like, that's insane. Then we had that clip, you know. And that's ridiculous. Like, that's insane. Then we had the stuff at U2 with, what was the song we did at U2? But even the fact that he can't remember the song he did with U2. Well, that gig, I was sharing. You've done so much. And I work in this fucking industry.

What the boys did is impossible but we looked up in the archives and we found the footage of it and it was just imagine and are you going

to RTE going show this show that no we're not demanding anything they've asked us on we said you know we're not bothered

they said look we'll do whatever you want to do we'd like to perform a couple of songs you have to take into account we'd lost Stephen

at this stage there was only four of us you know and I had taken most of the vocals that Stephen had done through the years now and looking forward for the first opportunity

to kind of be able to stand. Like most people in Ireland would say, I don't even know what your fucking voice sounds like because I never got my chance, you know. And with stuff, I've been working with Brian now for five or six years and as you know we've been gigging all over the world. We haven't done one gig in Ireland. It's crazy, you know we've been gigging all over the world. We haven't done one gig in Ireland. It's crazy, you know.

Is it part of that you kind of don't fucking want to? Well, it's not that. I mean... Because the gig... Like, I follow a boy's life and I love... I just love the fact that

the two of you are gigging. I love that I can tell this is something that you're doing because you love us. Do you know what I mean? I can get that vibe this is something you're doing because you love it. Do you know what I mean? I can get that vibe this is something you're doing

because you love it. But we're doing it because we can. And I love seeing you doing well and I love seeing like they're gigging in Dubai they're gigging in Malaysia. I think that's class.

It's great. You see Brian and I are two of the same characters from two different bands. You know we never took ourselves that serious. We always kept ourselves

quite grounded. You could both kick the shit out of ISIS. He's on his own with that one I don't get involved with that shit listen I use social media for charity, for promotion and for the

odd bit of family stuff, I certainly don't take on ISIS you know what I mean, that's Brian but like, we do it because we love it. But the reality is, we sell out everywhere we go. And it's amazing.

Now, we're doing theaters like this one, like, you know, most of the old theaters in the UK. But then when we get out to the, like, we're out in July,

we're out in Indonesia, Jakarta, Surabaya, where we do weddings. Like, we'll get calls up and I started it and I managed this for the first few years. And I just said, we like toaya where we do weddings like we'll get calls up and I started it and I managed us for the first few years and I just said we like to do what we do and I enjoy working so it's it's

nice work if you can get it yeah yeah you know so we tend not to turn anything down you want to do boys life gigs in Ireland it's you know what I'm at a stage now where I don't really care it doesn't bother me that much yeah but that said there's another kind of emotional side to me that would think because I'm mad to see you

I'd love genuinely you know I'd love for me it's a selfish kind of want I suppose because

because I never really truly got to show what I can do in Boyzone I was suppressed now that I'm so upfront and in control, I would love to come home

from my family and friends and put a show on. But I suppose it's the insecurities that you've grown with over your life that you're afraid to kind of dip your toe in, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's a sense of when you're outside of Ireland,

you can feel like, I've earned this, I've achieved this, but then you come straight back to Ireland and that negativity comes in and you start to doubt yourself. You're only in the country a wet day and you put the radio on

and there's somebody fucking ripping the shit out of you. You know what I mean? Fucking tires. Anybody want some tires? I did get a genuine question about the tyres. If somebody goes into the tyre dealership and says, I was listening to the radio and Keith Duffy sent me in here to get some fucking tyres,

is that going to work? Absolutely. Ask all my friends. They all do it. So it does work? Tell them Keith sent you. All right. I don't have a car, but I'll be getting some fucking tires, man. Just stack them up.

Get them for Halloween. Stare at them. We're going to have a little interview so you can have a pint and a piss. We'll be back out in about 15 minutes, all right? Dog bless. Before we continue with the interview with Keith Duffy, it's time for the little ocarina pause where you're going to hear an advert.

I actually have my ocarina with me this week because I'm recording this one in my studio, not my office. I found the ocarina. Beautiful ceramic ocarina with a leather strap. I actually found the ocarina because earlier on in the podcast I said that a mirror fell down

in my gaff and it gave me a bit of a fright. Well, when I went in to pick the mirror back up there was the fucking ocarina. It was there on the ground, I just hadn't seen it. Now I'm after freaking myself out because I just realised that possibly the it was some type of podcasting ghost

that knocked the mirror and made me find the ocarina, I'm not going to think like that, I can't think like that if I think like that now I won't sleep tonight fuck me, alright here's the ocarina On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen.

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So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Beautiful, beautiful ocarina. It's been so long since I played that ocarina, lads. It's been possibly three or four months. What a beautiful little instrument. That was...

I guess the ocarina is back, lads. Wonderful. So that was the ocarina pause. You probably heard an advert for something, alright? Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon. Patreon.

The Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. I adore doing this work. I adore every fucking second of this work. And it's made possible because I have patrons. So if you're enjoying the podcast, if it's given you a little bit of solace during the

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It's only available to students from UL. But I'll be chatting with a sports psychologist. And the rugby player Keith Wood. Who's from Limerick. So I'm looking forward to that. I don't know a huge amount about sports. So I'm definitely looking forward to stepping outside of my comfort zone. I'll be back on Twitch next week,

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The podcast space is becoming quite corporate. Now back to my interview with the wonderful Keith Duffy where we speak about that time in Edinburgh where we saw a fellow wank. I just got a note on stage. Please can I have your red hat?

On the back of a COVID notice. Fair fucking play. Fair play. Who asked for the red hat? You may have my red hat. Do you know what? Don't take this on an airplane because You may have my red hat. Do you know what? Don't take this on an airplane.

Because, you'll know when you smell it. So I have about 60 of these. So you can have this, yeah. Fuck. You're welcome. Seriously, wash that before it goes on an airplane. I'm not joking.

That's one of those things with my fucking job, man. Can I have your bag? No. You can't have the bag. What bag are you talking about? I'd be doing fucking gigs back in the Rubber Bandits days. I'd be doing gigs like the gig we did in Edinburgh. I'd be doing fucking gigs back in the rubber bandit's days I'd be doing gigs

like the gig we did in Edinburgh I'd be doing gigs like that and people would be throwing fucking yokes and throwing everything up on stage you know but the thing is someone

I could be gigging in Edinburgh I could be gigging in New York people are throwing drugs and I mightn't see it and Mr. Chrome once got a fucking yoke in his hoodie but like

that's all fun and games until you're going through airport security tomorrow fucking hell so a bizarre thing happened backstage Keith so you were roasting so you decided to take off your jacket right absolutely fantastic physique

look at this wonderful man he looks fantastic but you fucking said to me, before we went out, he takes off his jacket and Keith says to me, is it all right if I take off my jacket?

Is that okay? And I'm like, I don't give a fuck, you're an adult. You get conditioned. You get conditioned. It's the boys, or the boy band thing.

You've been conditioned. Yeah, you know, we were so young, you know, you don't realise, you just fall into yeah you know we were so young you know you don't realize you you just fall into you fall into a routine where you have to kind of make sure that you all follow suit and uh believe it or not in certain performances or certain things that you're doing whether it be tv or a stage uh taking off a jacket could make somebody really fucking pissed off. Yeah. Well, not here.

I was fucking sweating. Honestly, God, I was just... We want Keith Duffy to be comfortable and free. Can I take off me jocks? But, so another reason I brought you on tonight

is we've ended up crossing paths numerous times over the years by accident the first one was we were in Edinburgh right

oh Jesus so there's this and you went back and did it the other fucking week I did it on Thursday the same fucking gig there's this fucking gig man

I haven't done it in about five years Paddy's Day a place called the three sisters in edinburgh it's mad it's like every it was just me and him and three girls it was great it's the maddest gig going it's like every irish person in scotland on patrick's day pissed stuffed into one venue and it opens at half nine in the morning and they told us they wanted us on stage at half eleven yes

that night and you're drinking since like it's 14 hours later it's purgatory and you have to get pissed and no one

everyone expects the performer to be pissed so one we were gigging there and it was you've got to talk about the story of the

going in the window yeah alright so it was the first time I met you so we were gigging and. Yeah. All right. So it was the first time I met you. So we were gigging and we were sharing a fucking dressing room. It was yourself.

It's yourself and Shane. And Big Ben, wasn't it? And Big Ben and Fats and Small for some reason. That DJ combo. But Ben's from Fats and Small. He'd done the vocals on Turnaround. You know, hey, what's wrong with you? Yes.

Because the next day in the local scottish paper you got a photograph with fats and small and it said keith duffy and the rubber bandits bastards but uh so we were doing a gig man and it was great we were having wonderful crack and then we're backstage and they gave us this this uh room and there was drink there where there was everything no explain the room though let's try and they gave us this room and there was drink there, there was everything. No, explain the room though. Let's try and picture this out. This is unbelievable.

I mean, for like a shitty little gig like that, the room had king size bunk beds. Yeah. A dartboard. A dartboard, a table, a foosball table, a pool table, and then a big huge smeg fridge full of booze. Yeah, infinite drink honestly it had 42 inch plasma screens at the foot of these king size bunk beds so you could get in the bottom bunk and do

what the fuck you like and nobody'd even see you nobody would even know you were there allegedly so we're there but we're sharing this room? And we've got our bags on. So, but across the way from, like, our dressing room are our student flats. So we're there and we turn the lights off because we don't want people looking in and going, oh, there's Bizone and the Rubber Bandits.

But anyway, as we're looking across, right, we're getting ready to go on stage. I mean, we're nearly late for stage because of it. so this fella decides across the way so no hang there's a car outside our window

right there's a car outside our window and it's like a U block the building that we're in so our window looks out and there's

windows along the right and then opposite us is another building mirroring the building that we're in but somebody is in the window identical to the window that we're in. This is a man who studied architecture in Finglas.

I have to give you the right picture. So we're looking across a drunken courtyard. Loads of fucking loads of people drunk in a courtyard like a beer garden. And we're about the third floor up. And we're looking across at the third floor window identical to our window window but we've our lights off because we don't want to see the rubber bands and boys home why don't answer that but the guy has the light on in his room so he's so he decided it's time for his evening wank but he doesn't know he doesn't give a shit about what's going on this is his house.

But the best part of it was, so we're looking across going, that fella's not wearing any pants. What's going on here? What's going on? So then he sits down at his window, right? Put his back to us. And all we can see is his erect penis.

Nothing else. With a laptop in front of him as he's greedily switching tabs on like nine different porn videos. And we watched him like masturbate to completion. But as he's wanking, we made the decision

in the dressing room. We made the decision. We all kind of said, if I was having a wank, I kind of would like to turn around and see that like like, Bison and the rubber bandits are watching. So we start fucking banging on the window, howling and screaming, trying to open the

window to throw sweets across. The window wouldn't open more than that, so we couldn't get our arm out to fuck. We had a load of boxes of M&M's on the table. Yeah, yeah, and we're trying to throw them across. And we're trying to get the M&M's to hit his window to go, Oi, mate, there's 3,000 people looking at you wanking. But then, of course, the crowd are wondering, well, why the fuck are boys on the rubber band

throwing M&M's on us? And we're trying to go to the crowd, it's not about ye, it's about the fellow wanking. So he didn't see us, he didn't know. He finished his wank, he came. And then he got up and did the dishes. Without washing his hands?

He did the dishes like fucking pure Donald Duck, t-shirt and no jocks, on a fucking spanty, Fante, cum dripping off the top of his glands. Didn't wipe his dick. And then I had to go out and sing Horse Outside. And they were wondering why I was late for stage. And I was in shock. I was just like, this was brilliant. I love the fact that I was with fucking half a bison looking at a fellow wank. This is amazing.

And then we had such crack that afterwards you you said to us you goes Jesus lads I love the stuff that you're doing it's brilliant and you said bison are playing in in uh where were you gonna be we're playing the pint soon we're play The Point, you should come on and support us we've got nothing to lose which I thought was beautiful because it was a compliment you meant it but it was also like yeah fuck it man, we'll fuck up our career

come on and support us rubber bandits so then we wrote a song called Boyzone you've got nothing to lose because of what you said I know and then a couple of years later, so I went into the, what's that news station?

News Talk. And I had a hangover or something and they were interviewing me and they were asking me about traditional desserts. And asking me if Limerick has any traditional desserts. So I was bored and I lied. And I said, yeah, we have a traditional dessert in Limerick called a Sarsfield's Gannis.

And it's gelatinized cider with a Kit Kat crumbled on top. So they believed me. And then it was your birthday. And you came in the next day and they made you a Sarsfield's. Some poor fucking news talk intern stayed up all night gelatinizing cider and gave it to Keith Duffy for his birthday and they took a photo of Keaton Keats going what the fuck is this? I had it all as well hang on it went further than that I went to a hotel in with my wife and daughter in Limerick to George or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they have it

on their fucking menu now. Compliments of me and you. Honestly, God. So. He has pure vodka in that bottle, by the way. I do not. He doesn't drink water.

He's not straight anyway. Let's see if we've any... I got some questions from the internet. So, Keith. Oh, fuck. There's one of them here. It wasn't me. I simply have to ask this

because the fella who asked it was about 19 and it's a story his dad said to him. Yeah, so he wouldn't know who the fuck I am. He goes, Can you ask Keat? Does Keat remember sitting in my flat in Ballymun back in the early 90s, playing with my old fado's video camera, zooming in on all the birds' ditties, asking, where's the tits enlarger on this?

Oh, man. Look, that is an amazing question. Like, do you remember that? Like, there has to be some truth in that. There has to be. No one made that up. No, you can't make a question like that up.

So it's like, somebody's father genuinely told their son that story about a flat and bally mon and me and ditties. But where's the tits enlarger on this? But seemingly I was zooming in on the ditties. What do you mean though? I've fucking no idea. Do you mean that you could zoom in on tits or that literally the camera would have something that would make breasts larger in 1991? Fucking hell. I hope technology's moved on. We'd have a great time.

What is your best and worst celebrity encounter? My best celebrity encounter? Well, I mean, we spoke a lot of the various people that we were lucky enough to perform with earlier on. But my hero has always been Larry Mullen. I was a marching drummer. I love the drums and you two are my favorite band. and freezing cold, four sweatshirts on, a little garden shed. My drum kit was set up in there. I'd have to open up the door and climb underneath the floor, Tom, and up onto the stool to get behind the kit. And then I had two little shells with two candles. I'd light the candles. And after three or four songs, anyway, you'd be down to bare skin.

Even in the middle of the winter, you'd be sweating. But, yeah, Larry was always an absolute absolute gentleman I met him a couple of times in the early early days and he went out of his way to be kind and nice to us and it's amazing because people do say you should never meet your heroes because they'll only let you down and he certainly didn't he was he was amazing he was just you know he could see we were excitable young lads you know on a quest of a wave, very, very blessed and lucky to be in the position that we were and that we were excited to meet him. And he just did everything that you would kind of want someone

in that position to do. And, you know, since then looked after us very, very well. When we lost Stephen Gately, God rest him, it was a really horrendous time for us. Stephen was one of the most amazing, beautiful Irish people from Sheriff Street, you know, had a very tough life and it was very, very sad. He managed to make all of his dreams come true in his short life, which gives you great solace because, you know, he wanted to be a singer in a band and he nailed it. He wanted to be an actor and he nailed it. He wanted to be a West End star

and he fucking nailed it. And my dad only said that to me shortly. My dad only passed away in recent times, unfortunately, but he'd said to me at one stage just, um, just before Christmas, he said, Stephen might've died when he was 33. But if you think about it, you know, anytime he was in the house, he always talked about the West End and that was only a dream at that time. I mean, being successful in Boyzone was only a dream at that time, you know, and he was very verbal about his dreams.

And my dad said, I'll never forget him telling me that he was going to be a singer. He was going to be on the West End. He was going to be an actor. And he did all three and he did all three very well. In fact, he went on to write a lovely West End, he was going to be an actor and he did all three and he did all three very well in fact he went on to write a lovely book called The Tree of Seasons and it was published

just after, we had it published just after he died so he was an accomplished writer really as well then so I kind of derailed my own self there I always like to talk about Stephen a little bit but in his short life he did manage to make all his own dreams come through.

And Larry kind of could see the individuals in all of us. And you could see the sensitive side of Stephen and kind of looked after that. So Larry probably for me was one of the kindest, nicest people that we met. The people that really upset me and I was devastated. The first, and I'm not going to dwell long on this guy because I wouldn't give him the fucking airtime. What's his name? Jeremy Clarkson.

Fucking dickhead. Honestly, God. You get five Northside Dublin guys, right, in the BBC, very excited about everybody they meet, even the makeup artists. And Jeremy Clarkson is in the BBC, very excited about everybody they meet, even the makeup artists. And Jeremy Clarkson's in the makeup seat. He's doing some other show while we're doing a show. And we walk in and he's Top Gear

and we're all into our cars. And we, you know, we loved our cars. And to see him was amazing. And he was just so awful and rude and arrogant. And your young lads like it, watching Top Gear, being a fan of what he's doing. He just dismissed awful and rude and arrogant and your young lads like it watching Top Gear being a fan of what he's doing he just dismissed us

and get away you fucking Irish boys you know ah for fuck's sake no need for this so that was that wasn't nice you know

there was no need for that and then I was working over in the VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards in Madison Square Gardens in between joining Coronation Street and leaving Boys Zone,

I did a bit of presenting and stuff. And I was hired to go over to do all the celebrity interviews for the VH1 Awards. And one of my favorite actors, one of my favorite movies was Jerry Maguire. And Cuba Gooding Jr. was just fucking brilliant, you know, showing me the money and all that type of stuff. And I just thought, you know, wow, what a legend. And he was my next guy. And I came up and I grabbed his hand and went,

how you doing? Like, fuck, show me the money. And he just went, fuck off. And walked away. And I was devastated. And I kind of looked around and I see, see who saw. I needed to kind of just scribblevel down and hide he made me feel about that size and there's no need to make people in this world feel like that

you know no if you can be anything to anybody be fucking kind you know exactly you were on

the first ever celebrity big brother as well that's right Jesus what like what was that like man was that mad crazy I? Was that mad?

Crazy. I mean, it was nuts. That was 20... 2001. 22 years ago. Yeah. 21 years ago. A long, long time ago.

God. It was crazy because I was coming out of Boyzone, literally just left Boyzone, had no idea what I was going to do. Ronan, Stephen and Mikey had all signed solo deals with various record companies. Shane and I didn't. So I really didn't know where my future,

I was 26 years of age and my fucking career was over. You know, where am I going to go now? What am I going to do? And I just decided to myself, look, until you figure that out keep yourself keep your profile high you know keep your face on the tv keep keep you know keep your name out there do a few gigs to try and maintain yourself and hopefully the penny will drop and you'll know what's right uh for the next move um and I signed a new agent in London called um can't remember I'm getting old

honestly god I can't remember what happened yesterday um anyway he he said look this is this is what we we have an idea for you and we need to get your personality out there we need to let people see who you are we need to you know you know, we need to create this vibe. And the best way to do that is to put you on this show they're going to do called Big Brother. You might've seen it. They haven't, they haven't done a celebrity special at this stage and it was all for comic relief. We weren't being paid. Um, and then, then 10 years later, I see like fucking guys going in for 250 grand. They're going, fuck, timing's wrong there. But, uh, we went there for the right reasons. went in to do it for Comic Relief and I stayed the whole time I was I was uh there till the last day um and it it was a it was a hard experience because I didn't really think that they were going to record us all the time. So when I was lying on the sofa

with Vanessa Feltz doing my toenails, talking to Anthea Turner about female masturbation, I didn't really think they were going to show that bit. Like how quickly do you forget? When you're there, Keith, how quickly do you forget? I was probably a little bit naive, to be honest. And I hadn't seen much reality TV at that stage. So I didn't really think that they would I was never rude per se I was never bold it was just you know I was a married man with kids so going on tv and speaking about certain subjects is gonna like we were speaking about earlier on I chose to be in this business yeah my my mother didn't my wife didn't, my son didn't, you know what I mean?

My daughter didn't. So whatever I do in the public eye, whether it be positive or negative, affects my family. And a lot of the time in Ireland, we like to mention that, you know? If somebody fucks up, we like to tell their mammies, yeah, what the

fuck is your son like on that TV show? Disgusting. Talking about masturbation. tell their mommies yeah what the fuck is your son like on that tv show disgusting talking about masturbation my god none of us have ever done that in this country because you know what i mean but my wife didn't like it either you know and it got me into a little bit of trouble um and there was probably a lot more than i've just mentioned to be honest but when i came out of the house and all the celebrations and the flashing lights and the fucking fireworks and everything else I was so excited genuinely yeah only to be hit by an absolute thunderbolt of lightning because I didn't get to see my wife and kids and my mum or whatever when I came out my dad and my older brother were there waiting for

me and neither of them like getting on a plane you know what I mean neither of them like going anywhere and I don't even know if my brother even knew I was in a band at one stage and I just looked I said what the fuck are yous doing here where's where's my wife well they're not here oh my god they're not here and I said said, oh, okay. I said, why? Did I do something wrong? Look, let's just say at one stage you were fucking divorced. But you managed to pull it back together before the end. It'll be alright, son, don't worry.

But just say hello to the nice people and let's go fucking home. 20 odd years ago, Jesus. When we were backstage You said something to me That a lot of people Who are in the public eye Say which is

You were envious of my bag Yeah And I was explaining You know I have this bag And I'm not even Like properly fucking famous Like you are But I just like to have

Properly famous people Always have that opinion Of themselves How do you mean? You are that famous I'm not In fact it's have that opinion of themselves. How do you mean? You are that famous. In fact, it's quite impressive and remarkable and just that, you know,

the various generations from the time I've known you, how you've stayed so um credible and and and current and now um like my son who'll be 26 next month is a massive fan and you know that we were talking earlier on of a of a boy that's 19 who told you to ask me a question about a ballymun flat he's no fucking idea who I am but he knows who you are and he's 19 so the point i'm making is you you've had a great ability to to keep every generation encouraged by what you're doing and uh you were right you were right and correct to wear the bag if you don't want to give away the best best things in life are free. And one of those things is anonymity.

Yeah. And you've remained and kept your anonymity, but you've had a very, very successful career over a long, long time. So it was a very wise decision that you made if you want to maintain your anonymity. And at times, we all do in this business, we'd all like to be able to go to a restaurant,

have dinner, and not have people pretend that they're not recording us and taking photographs of us and then seeing it later on. And it's okay when you're just having a piece of steak, but when you're having

to piss down the lane, it's not the same thing. Although if you pissed down the lane with a bag on, you'd still get shit, but they won't know who the fuck you are. Exactly.

I'm going to get loads of people to put bags on their heads and go piss down lanes all over Ireland. Fuck up his career completely. Man, there's cunts

who've done gigs. I'd be doing a gig down in fucking Kerry years ago and there'd be two cunts up in Donegal doing a gig. Thank you for all that, Keith.

That's very, very humbling. Thank you. But, Fucking blind drunk up there. But, like, one thing I was asking you about, which I was fascinated to find out, like, boys on are massive.

Sorry, she's loving herself. Fucking loves you on her buzz. How does it feel? How does it feel? Like, so when you're in Dublin, when you're in Ireland, you're fucking Keith Duffy. When you're in England,

you're Keith Duffy. When was the last time you got to go somewhere where no one knows Keith Duffy and you're just fucking Keith and you're living a normal life and what did it feel like? I know what you're saying, yeah mean in the UK I suppose because I'm not from the UK yeah we kind of get celebrated more you know if you go to a restaurant or bar you might

get the odd free dinner or free pint or whatever that doesn't happen in Dublin you know you're lucky not to get out I love the question has ended up with, they don't give me fucking free pints in Dublin. They don't give me free dinners in Dublin. It's nice though when you get it. I brought my daughter the weekend before last to, my daughter is a beautiful, special little girl. And she was 22 on the 11th of March, which was two weeks ago.

And she wanted to see Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. And we were going to go to see the Northern Lights for her birthday. And then that scared her for some reason. And she changed her mind that she wanted to go to see Anne Frank's house. So we went anyway.

And I made a deal with her because I tried to encourage her to get involved in whatever we're doing. So I said, look, I'll book the flights and hotels. You book whatever museums you want to see and you book us in and da da da so um I booked Van Gogh for the Friday um and a couple of he must have been expensive man for the three of us self-portraits um but my my daughter she she forgot to book Anne Frank's house and when I went online the day before we were

going I saw it sold out yeah it only can take a certain amount of people and it goes on sale the first Tuesday of every month and it's it's sold out and you can only buy tickets online and somebody said to me that if you go up really early in the morning people queue up and if there's no shows yeah you know you might get in but that statement was three years old um so but she was devastated and she has autism so she wouldn't understand us going to amsterdam what's the point of going if we're not going to get in and see anne frank's house she just wouldn't want to go and we'd already booked the tickets and all i said look we're going to get in to see anne frank's house. And how, I didn't know, but I said, we will do it.

So on the Saturday morning, we went and the queues were pretty crazy. And she was cold. She had a bit of a cold coming on and stuff. And I just thought, this isn't going to work. So we went back on the Sunday morning and I'll answer your question. We were there from seven o'clock.

It opens at nine o'clock. We were there at seven o'clock on the Sunday morning. And I caught, because I thought there was going to be big queues again and uh it was too cold so we were doing laps of the church there's a church right outside just to keep warm and stuff and I'm trying to figure out my head when they do open the doors what you know kind of baloney am I going to be able to give this guy to try and blag my way in here with my daughter so i'm considering everything and i've blagged a lot of shit in my life to be fair you know so i'm i'm not it's not that i'm not good at it i i kind of van but i you know i i can't not win on this one because it will

break her fucking heart and that's not what i'm out to do so by the time it got to 10 to 9 i swear to god i felt like i'd been there for hours and i was frozen and they came outside 10 to 9 I swear to god I felt like I'd been there for hours and I was frozen and they come outside 10 to 9 they put out the red bars there was no queues there was no many people maybe 12 people as opposed to Saturday morning which is crazy so I thought we might have a chance now and they put out the red ropes and I start getting the jitters I start kind of going oh fuck I hate this shit and then I'm kind of thinking is there a bar hope I get a few drinks you know give me a bit of Dutch courage, you know. And I just said, fuck it.

So I said, because I didn't want to use her disability to gain access. But the reality is it's because of her autism that I need to get her in there because she won't function, you know, correctly. She'll have, you know, a lot of upset over this. Yeah. So I went over to the guy and I said, excuse me, do you speak English? He goes, I do. And I kind of thought he sounded American

so he might speak English so I'm not going to have to break things down so I said look listen please just listen to me for a second I said I'm after coming over from Ireland I said my daughter's birthday and she wanted to go into Anne Frank's house I've tried the tickets online they were all sold out.

I kind of messed up. We're going home today. And as I'm talking, he just goes, calm down. He said, you had me at a low. He said, we've been watching you for the last two fucking hours outside freezing the bollocks off yourself. We knew you could read what time we opened it

so we knew you had no fucking tickets. It's alright. Get your daughter and go in and warm yourself up. You'll be fine. You'll be grand. But he didn't have any idea who I was. He was just a fucking nice guy. You know what I mean? And that's, you know. And did that feel good

to, you're just a human now. You're not worried about, did I get in because because exactly but it's the first time in my life that i've met someone that was genuinely kind for no reason other than being a good human you know what i mean not looking for anything in return not kind of going that's keith duffy or whatever yeah it was literally they saw a man and his daughter and a man that would do anything for his daughter, which I would. And he just said,

go in there and warm yourself up. You're going to be the first one in so you'll have the place to yourself. And it was an amazing experience actually.

So my daughter loved it. Just a clap for that. Yeah. So we get that. We get that sometimes in Ireland. You don't realise that clapping is actually a group activity and it sounds much better. So many people asked me to thank you

for the work that you've done for autism awareness in Ireland over the years. You were speaking about autism in the early 2000s when people were not speaking about it. Can you speak a little bit about that? Yes, I can. I didn't know what it was. I had no idea.

That word autism never came into my life before. Mia was born and Jay, at this stage, was four years of age. And we were young enough parents, but we'd had four years of age and we were young enough parents but we'd had four years of experience of rearing a toddler and Mia wasn't developing the way that Jay had done and she had some quirky ways about her and we used to laugh thinking it was funny but underneath it all we were really really worried we kind of thought what the fuck's going on and she did this thing called tensing where she'd straighten one arm and bend the other one and she'd kind of go into a dizzy.

And I used to be kind of funny and you'd laugh because you were terrified. Yeah. And we didn't really know what to do. And I started asking people, you know, what the fuck is wrong with my daughter? I didn't know. So a really, really quick story because it could take forever. I didn't know what it was. I had just come back

to live in Ireland. Boyzone had broken up at the end of 99. Mia was born in 2000. A friend of mine asked me to come out to a golf course in the South Side

to launch their charity day to use my profile or whatever, my celebrity, whatever, to, I didn't even play golf at the time,

to swing a club on the first tee and they're going to get photographs taken to try and promote the charity, to try and get some traction within media and in the newspapers by using my face, basically. So I said, no problem. If I can help out, I'd be happy to. So it was Leopardstown Golf Course.

I went out and I stood on the first tee and I was there with this man that owned the charity and whatever. And I swung the the first tee and I was there with this man that owned the charity and whatever and I swung the club and they took a few photographs and the media were happy the game went golf and on I was walking back to the clubhouse I said to the guy what's the charity and he goes it's called the red door it's a it's a school for the appropriate intervention and education for children with autism and I said to to him, sorry for my ignorance, but what's autism? And he said,

well, autism is a neurological developmental disorder. And he said, he went on to explain it and none of it made sense. And you could see that I got very inquisitive. I think he knew there was a reason

I was being inquisitive. And he started telling me about his own daughter and the school he had opened with his wife for his daughter. And if he was going to do it for his daughter, he might as well do it for other boys and girls like his daughter. And every question I asked him, it became very apparent to me. This is like my daughter.

This is exactly like my daughter. And it was an amazing breakthrough in one respect, because at least now I had a name for what I needed to deal with. But now I had to go and educate myself on what was needed to be done. My biggest worry in the world was going home and explaining it to my wife. Because both of us were up the walls worried, if I'm honest, you know. I was driving a big Jeep at the time with darkened windows. And I couldn't, I just remember I couldn't wait. These people were very kind

and nice and friendly but there was an explosion in me head and I knew I was going to fucking break down because it'd been coming and building and building and building and building

for so long now. So I got into my car in the car park and I just burst into tears and I cried my eyes out, got myself together and drove home I went into the house and I said to Lisa my wife I said Mia has autism and she gave me the most merciful thump to the jaw boom and then she broke down and cried her eyes out and

gave me a hug and we hugged each other and we cried because we both knew we never heard the word before but whatever that word meant we kind of knew that was the word we were looking for or maybe not as as the chance would have um it turned out then that everybody that knew anything about autism so first things first a man we met tonight Brian White had a good friend of mine and he's kind of been a mate of mine a long, long time. And he said, I know a guy who has a daughter with autism. We should go and visit him. So he put me in his car and he drove me out there. And we met this guy and we sat down.

And this guy was an amazing, amazing person. He explained, and I met this guy, I'd worked with him. He's something to do with the Pointe-D'Ape, with the Tree Arena. And we sat and we spoke for about two hours and it was an emotional day and he basically told me there's no appropriate intervention or schooling there's no nothing available to you right now unless you get a diagnosis through the state nobody's even going to recognize your daughter and early intervention is essential for the future of your daughter but if you can't get a diagnosis,

how can you get any type of intervention? So he said, you've got a bit of a rocky road ahead of you. You've got some obstacles in your way. So it was at that time I kind of thought, right, well, bring it on. So I had to go back, and I was talking to you about this earlier, because I hated school and I didn't do very well in school. And I never really believed or thought that, you know, academics were up my street at all.

And all of a sudden I had to become a real academic. I started reading and getting the knowledge I needed and putting the word out there. And ultimately, a long story short, I found other parents in the same position as myself. We got together. We created a charity per se we got we got a school open and um thank you and I do want to say I'm saying this on behalf

of other parents that were standing by my shoulder shoulder to shoulder it wasn't just me um but we did what we had to do and we got the school going. But unfortunately, and we did get a budget for the first 12 months. We did get a donation for the first 12 months as a project. We weren't allowed to call it a school.

But we could only afford to educate six kids and there was about 15 kids on the list at the time. So 15 families. We had to draw straws and I picked the 11th straw. So even though I was

very vocal in getting the school open my daughter didn't get a place and so we went on and we continued our fundraising and eventually I think it was six months later we got to extend the school to 18 children so it meant that my daughter got in and and we went on then and and just kept fighting and my my diary just got blocked up then I was traveling all over the country meeting different different families, trying to create awareness. I just fell into a campaign that we never designed, you know? I just fell into a position that we just went everywhere, you know?

Fair play. But I just say, you know, autism is a spectrum disorder, ASD, autism spectrum disorder, which means it's very, very slight to very, very extreme. And you can be anywhere on that and you mightn't even know it. But if you have a child or you know somebody that has a child, that's on the spectrum and it's quite noticeable and they're moderate to extreme on the spectrum.

Early intervention is essential, but it's not impossible. So if you want to give a bit of positive news to any of those people that you might know, just say the most important thing at this moment in time is that if you know how to put a smile on that kid's face, well, keep the smile there, and the rest we can do while they're smiling. Thank you. We'll keep the smile there and the rest we can do while they're smiling.

I want to say a big thank you to my guest, Keith Duffy. What a lovely man. What a fucking legend. Thank you. Thank you so much to Keith. Thank you to Ali for coming to the gig. This was the Blind By buy podcast have a lovely night dog bless you all

dog bless you all I hope you enjoyed that chat with Keith Duffy em if you liked it and you liked the sound of it

and the crack of that like I said I've got two more Vicar Streets coming up on the 5th of April and the 12th of April come along for the fun

I'll be back next week, most likely with a hot take. Until that time, mind yourself, rub a dog, enjoy the lovely long evenings, the clocks went back. Do something nice for yourself. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation

night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. We'll see you next time. you