Westlife: Our Story

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More immediately, our most recent variety show had got through to the All Ireland finals and I was one of the guitar players. I only had two weeks to learn how to play my part with two fingers bandaged up. I could still play, but it had to be mostly bar chords. That accident pretty much finished any guitar prospects I might have had.

If you’d have been at school with me, you may well have thought I was a cocky little shit. Certainly the older boys did and it caused me a lot of grief. If I saw someone picking a fight with my brother Tom, for example, even though he could look after himself I’d run over and try to stand up for him. ‘Get off my brother!’ I’d shout, which always embarrassed him because, of course, I was his little brother.

Unfortunately, I got hit plenty. There were some rough times back then. At times it was ridiculous and, to be totally honest with you, I still carry a lot of anger about those years with me now. There were some dark days.

The thing was, I suppose I had a bit of a name for myself. I was well known and popular with the girls from all different parts of the town. It was just kids playing at relationships, but the guys from the same area as these girls didn’t like it at all. As a result, I got bullied quite a bit by the older, tougher guys. I’m a little reluctant to call it bullying, it was and it wasn’t. It started off with verbal abuse, but soon escalated to actual physical violence. I recall walking home from one carnival with a split lip and getting hit at a school disco. One time I was walking along the street when three boys came across to me and – BAM! BAM! BAM! – they all punched me for no reason.

I’ve had too many black eyes, although luckily I never got a broken nose, even though plenty tried to give me one. The west coast of Ireland is full of very tough people. I don’t mean bullies, I mean people who have had a hard, difficult life. So these sort of fights were commonplace and, to be honest, unless you were put in hospital, it wasn’t a big deal.

It got worse, though. One day I was at home and the doorbell rang. I got up, opened the door and BAM, this guy standing there just punched me in the face. My mum was horrified and called the police, but nothing came of it.

It eventually got to the stage where I couldn’t go into town, particularly on a weekend, because I knew there were a handful of guys – young men, really, by this stage – who were after me.

At this point, I never hit back. I thought that if I hit them back, I was going to have ten of them on my doorstep the next night. And I would have, no doubt about it.

It’s improved enormously now, but like many towns, Sligo was rough in many areas when I was growing up and I couldn’t go to most places without some bother. It affected me massively for some time and I begged my mum to send me to music boarding school, because I just wanted to get out of town so badly. My eldest brother Gavin had told me about these schools where they organized rock bands and all that, and they sounded great, but the main reason I wanted to go to boarding school was to get out of Sligo. Of course there was no way my parents could afford that, so I had to live with the situation on the streets. I started lifting weights and got quite good quite quickly – not to compete with these people, but just to give myself some confidence.

Then one day, when I’d reached 16, I hit back.

I was with my cousin Gillian that day, just walking around town down by the supermarket. She used to introduce me to a few of the birds she knew and it was normally great craic. But not that time.

A few days before, I’d been at a Sligo Rovers football match and some kid had come up to me and said, ‘Watch out, so-and-so is after you ‘cos he heard you called his mum a whore.’ He was talking about the local hard knock. I just knew this little shit would later say to that same hard knock, ‘I saw Kian Egan at the football match and he called your mother a whore.’

Anyway, we were in the arcade and I noticed this hard knock and five of his mates across the way. They were all staring at me.

‘Gillian, let’s go. Come on.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s yer man who is after me.’

‘Why don’t you just go up to him and say something?’ Gillian didn’t stand for no messing.

‘No, no, come on, let’s just go.’

I grabbed her arm and we walked out of the arcade, but I could sense immediately that they were following us. By the time we’d walked down the street and round the corner, they’d caught up with us.

I was shitting myself.

‘Egan! Egan! Did you call my mother a whore?’

‘No, I did not. I don’t even know who you are, I’ve never seen you before in my life.’ Then I said, ‘My mum is waiting for me to go and pick some shoes.’

No good.

‘Meet me in the car park in 15 minutes. We’ll sort this out,’ he said.

This was ridiculous.

‘Look, if you want to hit me, do it now. I don’t want to wait 15 minutes, just do it now.’

I’m not gonna pretend – I was absolutely shitting my pants. I was terrified.

He took a swing and I reacted, finally. I blocked him and then hit back…hard. I just laid into him and really let loose. It was three years of frustration coming out. He’d picked on me on the wrong day.

But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Word spread that I would hit back and some of these idiots saw that as a challenge. So when I got a little older, going to nightclubs and getting well pissed was always a bit risky. I often went out with my friend Graham, who would later join me at the start of the Westlife tale, and he was a hard lad, very capable of looking after himself. He had a bit of a reputation because he was from a slightly rougher part of town. If I was with him, people would leave me alone – he used to say, ‘If you hit him, I’ll hit you!’ However, if I went out alone or without Graham, it could get very nasty. Many times I would arrive at a club, spot a few faces in the crowd and just do a U-turn and leave.

Sometimes, however, confrontation was unavoidable, but even then I tried my best not to hit back unless I absolutely had to. Generally, I would let someone hit me three times before striking back. I figured if they hit me more than three times, I had to do something to defend myself. I would always say, ‘I don’t want to fight you, let’s leave it,’ but sometimes I was in a corner.

Since I’m being very open here, I must say that I was never going to move onto the next level: physically abusing people. I didn’t want to punch anybody, I was never a fighter, I only ever hit someone because I had no choice, you know, I was defending myself. Just sitting talking about the shit I let myself go through with these guys is annoying, it makes me angry. Kids shouldn’t have to deal with all that.

I know I have the benefit of hindsight now, but I think those difficult times made me a much stronger person today. I think they taught me a hell of a lot about life at a young age and helped me to be the person I am.

Since Westlife has become successful, one or two of these guys have come up to me in Sligo, apologized for their behaviour and offered to buy me a pint. I haven’t taken the pints, but it’s interesting to see the change.

I am being brutally honest with you when I say that I did sometimes turn on those who were smaller than me. I never hit anyone, but I did call people names. It made me feel better, albeit momentarily, I’m afraid to say. I was stuck in the middle between the older, tougher boys who would kick the living daylights out of you and the quieter guys, often from the country, who came into school. It was a strange cruel pecking order. One day we pushed a kid into the shower with his brand new tracksuit and trainers on. His name was Mark Feehily.