Brian McFadden reveals the reason he wasn't surprised at One Direction star Liam Payne's tragic balcony plunge death - as he vows to protect the new boyband he is hoping will repeat the success he enjoyed with Westlife

In the funky surrounds of the NYX Hotel in Dublin’s Temple Bar, Brian McFadden is sitting beneath a neon sign declaring him to be in the naughty corner. When I point this out, he breaks into a broad grin.

‘Sure, no wonder. Haven’t I been there many times?’ he quips, no doubt a nod to the reputation he earned as the bad boy of squeaky-clean Westlife before sensationally leaving the group in 2004.

Almost three decades after the baby-faced Dubliner was catapulted into international stardom, Brian, now 46, is older and considerably wiser. Three marriages and three daughters later, he’s happily settled with Danielle Parkinson, whom he married last year, and their five-year-old daughter Ruby, while enjoying a close relationship with Molly and Lilly-Sue, his daughters with first wife Kerry Katona.

Not that he’s ready to put his feet up just yet. Almost three decades after Louis Walsh helped turn five young Irish lads into one of the biggest boybands in the world, Brian is hoping to repeat the magic himself.

He’s spearheading a nationwide search for Ireland’s next big boyband, inviting aspiring singers aged between 17 and 19 to follow in his footsteps.

And he’s not going it alone. Joining him are Sarah Gallagher, founder of NDA Talent, who has more than 20 years’ experience in music management, and London-based music agent Paul Franklin. He’s even been taking tips from his old manager Louis Walsh, with whom he’s had a famously colourful relationship.

‘Louis has been giving us advice on this and we’ll definitely be talking to him more about it too. Like, he’s brilliant – he did an amazing job with boys in Westlife,’ he says – not that he plans to follow every piece of advice Louis ever gave him.

‘There will be five members. Five is the magic number,’ he says. ‘Although Louis used to always say four, which was really weird. He said it’s because you can only get four in a taxi, and I’m like Louis – just pay for two taxis,’ he laughs.

Brian is visibly enthused at the prospect of discovering a new generation of Irish talent and it’s clear that this not just a new business venture – it’s a labour of love.

‘It’s time,’ he says. ‘I know we’ve had boybands that have come from X Factor and stuff like that, but when is the last time the kids had a boyband to go and watch and have the posters on the wall?

‘There are so many young talented kids in this country. We’re hands-on with this. This isn’t just a flash in the pan. We’ve been planning this for a long time.’

Of course, Brian knows better than most that putting five good singers together doesn’t necessarily make a successful boyband.

‘It’s about chemistry. It’s very easy just to get five good singers and put them together, but that’s not the reason Westlife and Boyzone are still doing gigs 30 years later.’

And speaking of chemistry, there’s certainly no shortage of it between Brian and former Boyzone star Keith Duffy, with whom he’s enjoyed something of a showbiz bromance for the past decade.

What began as a three-week experiment has turned into a hugely successful double act, with the two former boyband heart-throbs still touring together, swapping stories about their pop-star pasts and, by the sounds of it, having more fun than they ever expected.

‘It was supposed to just be the two of us sitting talking about our lives,’ Brian explains. ‘And then we ended up singing a few of the songs on it, and then 10 years later we’re doing our sixth or seventh sold-out tour, bringing out original music – it’s just crazy.

‘We have so much fun,’ Brian says. ‘We have great craic on the stage. A bit of fun travelling together, playing golf. It’s brilliant. And we’ve got a life too. That’s the difference, you know?. Even though doing the shows is important to us, the most important thing is being at home, having a family life, having an actual life outside of it.’

It’s a far cry from the relentless demands of Westlife’s early years, which begs the question: having experienced the immense pressure of fame at such a young age, why is he now looking for teenagers to follow in his footsteps?

‘It’s a good question,’ he acknowledges. ‘Look, we were all 18 when we started. I think to have chemistry they need to be around the same age, and I think the 17 to 19 window is perfect. They’re also just coming out of school. They’re young enough to be able to learn still and they have energy, they’ll be buzzing.’

But the industry these young hopefuls will enter is almost unrecognisable from the one he knew, particularly when it comes to social media, which has transformed the way stars communicate with their fans.

‘Obviously, when we started, the world was a very different place. You didn’t have social media. You didn’t have the the internet side of things. So everything had to be physically done - every interview, every newspaper, magazine, every photograph - and you had to do that in every country you were touring in. So the lads will be busy of course, but they’re never going to be as busy as we were back in those days.’

And Brian is also acutely aware of the psychological pressures that accompany sudden fame, something he says his team is determined to address.

‘We’re going to make sure these kids are mentally stable because it can be a lot for a young person to deal with the fame,’ he says.

And when our conversation turns to his friend Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who died after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony in Argentina in October 2024 aged just 31, Brian makes a sobering admission.

‘I wasn’t surprised, and I think that was the sad thing. A lot of us that knew Liam, there weren’t too many people who were shocked about it. It was like you could see something like that was going to happen.’

Brian believes the support surrounding young stars can disappear once they are no longer commercially successful.

‘You have to remember when those guys were together, everybody was all around and protecting them because they were an investment. And as soon as they weren’t an investment anymore, everyone just seemed to disappear, leaving them on their own.

‘That’s one of the things we’ve talked about a lot, making sure that these kids are protected all the way and afterwards as well. If it doesn’t work, we’ve got to be there to make sure that their bridge back into normal life is smooth too.’

Indeed, Brian – who has hundreds of thousands of followers himself on social media - has his own way of dealing with the overwhelm and less pleasant side of fame: he simply doesn’t read the comments.

‘I just post. I do what Liam Gallagher does – he says what he has to say and that’s it. Replies are turned off. Because 90 per cent of people that are going to say something, they’re not going to say that to your face.’

It’s a policy that extends further and for good reason (is romantic history has, after all, generated almost as many headlines as his music career).

Brian married Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona in 2002, and they welcomed Molly and Lilly-Sue before splitting in 2004. He was later engaged to Australian singer Delta Goodrem, before marrying Irish presenter Vogue Williams in 2012; they separated in 2015.

Vogue has since spoken publicly about not being invited to his 2025 wedding, but Brian has little interest in revisiting old relationships.

‘I only talk about my family. They can do what they want – I just talk about my actual family. Why would I want to talk about anyone else?’ he shrugs.

He met Danielle, a former heptathlete and PE teacher, in 2016, and the couple became engaged in 2019. After postponing their wedding plans during the pandemic, they married on Lusty Glaze Beach in Cornwall last July, with Ruby as flower girl.

Their happiness followed a difficult journey to parenthood, including IVF treatment and pregnancy loss, before Ruby arrived in May 2021. Brian is particularly proud of how Danielle and his older daughters have bonded.

‘As stepmums go, Danielle’s amazing,’ he says. ‘Even though Ruby and Molly and Lilly are technically half-sisters or something, they’re just sisters.’

There is, however, one other woman in his life – one who has been a constant through it all: his mother, Mairead. In true Irish mammy style, there’s very little her beloved son could do wrong, he laughs.

‘Oh look, she’s my number one fan, it didn’t matter what I had done,’ he says. ‘Even when I got divorced, she’s like “well done Brian.”’

Brian lights up when he speaks about his daughters, and he proudly reveals that 25-year-old Molly is currently starring in West End show John Proctor Is The Villain.

‘She wants to be on stage because she doesn’t want to be famous. She wants to learn her craft properly,’ he beams.

Still, watching her move to London has been unexpectedly emotional.

‘The scary part is when they finish school and you don’t know where they’re going to end up. Like Molly now moved to London. Even though she’s 25, she’s Molly. When I was Molly’s age, I was divorced and I’d already left Westlife. But she still looks like a little baby to me. She’s still only a child. I can’t get my head around that.’

Ruby, meanwhile, is still trying to make sense of her dad’s fame.

‘It’s kind of funny what my nighttime job is. I’m going to perform these sold-out shows, and then the next morning I’m doing the school run,’ he laughs. ‘She’s wondering why the parents from other classes know me at the school gates.’

Becoming a father again in his forties has made Brian more aware of what he missed when Molly and Lilly-Sue were small.

‘It’s not that it’s easier or more difficult. For me, obviously, because I have a balance in my life now, I spend so much more time, and I do the school runs, and I take Ruby to her netball class and her gymnastics, and you’re a lot more involved. But when I first became a father to Molly and Lilly I was only 20, so I was a kid as well.

‘I feel like I’m making up for all the lost time with Molly and Lilly, all the things I missed with them that I would have loved to have experienced.

‘I would just love to go back and do what I do with Ruby. I’d love to have taken Molly and Lilly into school every day and be there when they come out of school and not be away.’

And while fatherhood has changed, so has his touring regime. The late-night takeaways have given way to gym sessions and healthy meals, although Brian can at least laugh now about Louis Walsh’s notoriously blunt observations on his weight.

‘Yeah, he did make them and he was right,’ he laughs. ‘We used to come off stage, and the only food we could get was McDonald’s or Burger King. Every time we used to put on weight. So on the tour, halfway during the run of the shows, the stylists would have to bring the next size up because we put on so much weight.’

These days, Brian and Keith have a rather unlikely touring companion: an air fryer.

‘We have it our tour bus and in the dressing room. So we cook chicken wraps and stuff. We’re just conscious to be a little bit more healthy.

‘It’s very rock and roll. I just wish I hadn’t waited till I was 45 to start that,’ he grins.

Brian is every bit the family man – and there’s a more serious reason he is determined to make plenty of time for family these days. Danielle’s father died just weeks before our interview, a loss that has sharpened his awareness of how quickly life moves.

‘We just lost my wife’s father about six or seven weeks ago,’ he says. ‘So obviously, with Ruby having her nanny and granddad here in Ireland, they’re not getting any younger.

‘So we try and come back as much as we can, just to spend as much time with them as possible. You just don’t know what way life is going to go.’

Aspiring singers aged 17 to 19 who believe they have what it takes to become part of the new group are being encouraged to apply online via eu.castitreach.com/a/mmm/irishboyband/audition. Applications will close on Sunday, October 25, at 5pm.