INTERVIEW (Words: Rose Sheperd, Photography: Trevor Ray Hart)

To go from boy-band heart-throb to solo success is no easy task. especially after admitting you're gay. But if it all goes wrong for Boyzone's Stephen Gately, he won't mind too much- there's always the candle-making course to fall back on.

Two years ago, Stephen Gately was under severe stress, losing sleep, worried that he might be heading for a nervous breakdown. And now look at him. He's as happy as a sandboy. Life is as corky as can be- all thanks, ironically, to a security guard who tried to sell his revelations to the tabloids, thereby bouncing Stephen into coming out. Where were you when the new broke that Boyzone heart-throb Stephen Gately was gay? Stephen knows exactly where he was: in a Milan hotel room, with his boyfriend, Eloy de Jong, former member of Dutch boy band Caught In The Act. It was the night of 16 June 1999, and they were waiting, rather queasily, for the balloon to go up.

"We were sitting watching Sky news, saying, 'Oh God, the story's coming out tomorrow! Wonder how big it's going to be'. And they said, 'Here's tomorrow's headlines,' and it comes up. My jaw dropped. All the tragedies in the world, the famines, the earthquakes, people dying, and the three biggest tabloids chose to put me on the cover. We were in The New York Times," he says, still wondering at it. "Little Stephen from Sherriff Street, Dublin, you know. In The New York Times!"

It was the end of all the stealth and subterfuge. It was not, however, the end of his career. And that had, of course, been the big fear. Because he could have lost it all- and it was a very big all to lose. Boyzone is one of the most successful bands in pop history. Over seven years they racked up no fewer than six number one singles, four number one albums, and they were the first act to make the Top three with their first 14 singles. From the day that their debut single, "Love Me For A Reason", reached number two in 1994, the five boys- Ronan Keating, Stephen Gately, Keith Duffy, Shane Lynch and Mikey Graham- became household names, with an adolescent following the world over. They were showed with awards for their music, their haircuts, for simply being them. And if, in 1999, they were not still in the ascendant, they were certainly still up there, still huge. As it was, to Stephen's great relief, fans rallied round. Letters of support poured in. And he was free at last, to get on, to live his life, which is what he has been doing ever since.

From the age of 16, if not before, Stephen knew that he was gay. His fellow Boyz were in on the secret- and it seemed it had to be secret. As teen idols, they had their collective image to maintain. "It was so stressful," he recalls. "For six, seven years, you had to think of completely hiding your sexuality. That was really, really difficult. Eloy and I would have to take different cars, different planes, check into our hotel at different times. And all those questions that you had to dodge. 'Who's your favourite girl?', 'Which girls do you fancy?'- So I can't express what a weight it was off my shoulders."

You can almost see it in the lightness of his being. He is, as you would expect, both eager and earnest, he takes himself and his work seriously. He is also, though, a wicked mimic, with a highly developed sense of the absurd that runs alongside a deep interest in the spiritual. He is so full of the joys, indeed, that it's as though he were lit from within.

And, at 25, there is so much to be joyful about. He has the fame he craved, since, at the age of 13, he started signing autographs for school friends, in anticipation of celebrity. He's been named Irish Personality of the Year, and Hero of 1999 (by Smash Hits). He and Eloy have a house in the countryside, just 20 minutes from the centre of Amsterdam, which they share with Joey the shih-tzu, Woody the Merton cocker spaniel and Casper the Persian cat.

"We have a park just around the corner," he enthuses, "where we walk the dogs and feed the swans, and that's breathtaking. And our land is on water, anyway. We have a boat, so we go off down the canals with the dogs and a picnic, on sunny days, and read our books."

Before he joined Boyzone, he had been nowhere very much. "I'd never been on an aeroplane. First time I flew, I would have killed for the window seat. ow I've learned so much about the world." And so it seems, for he walks into the smart Amsterdam hotel where we meet for lunch, with an attitude of complete ease. Then he's all grace and no airs, as he kindly tries to steer me through the Japanese menu.

He has come a long way from the "rough area" of Dublin where he was born. It seems to please him to relate that he grew up poor, the fourth of five children, raised in a flat on Sherriff Street. He wore a lot of hand-me downs, for a time shared a bed with his sister, remembers how his mother cried when they hadn't the money to send him on a school trip. "Our holidays, for summer, were being sent to our aunt's house, or else it was this big place, this huge house, 300 kids, with these dormitories. . . all the kids from the area went, and that was your holiday. It was brilliant." He paints a vivid picture of the poor kids of Dublin, living off their wits, chopping up pallets to sell as kindling, bagging potatoes all day, for a bar of chocolate, a coke and a packet of crisps. "My dad used to be a painter and decorator, which was a nightmare for me, because sometimes I had to go to work with him, for a pound a day, and scrape about 20 walls. But my dad kind of taught me, and that was nice. And my mum was a full-time mum, except she used to do a spot of cleaning."

With a couple of pints of stout inside him, Dad would sing ballads, while Mum played the spoons, but that is not to say that the family made all their own entertainment. They had television, of course they did. "And," he jokes, "I was the remote control. 'Get up and change the channel.' 'Change the channel.' Also, I was the tea-maker. I don't know how many cups of tea I made in my life. You know what people are like in Ireland, they just drink so much tea."

Even school is recalled with strange fondness. "I loved it! My art teacher was great, and my drama teacher, who got me into drama."

Maybe this was where the notions of fame came from, after he joined a community theatre group and played lead roles. As a small boy, he did a bit of modelling. At 14 he won the all-Ireland disco dancing championship. He had a small part in the film The Commitments. And when, in 1993, he saw an ad for likely lads to join a new boy band, he rang manager Louis Walsh and asked, "What height do you have to be?" Oh, he was told, about 5ft 10in, 6ft. But, Stephen, in his own words "a little short arse", applied anyway- the only one of 250 hopefuls to turn up at the auditions with a CV.

He says he stands 5ft 6in. I'd say make it 5ft 4in, for cash, but he's every inch determined, and he got what he wanted, he got chosen by Walsh. Then there was the real heart pain, when, on tour, he missed Ireland so much that the bad got him a T-shirt printed with the plaintive words: "I have to go home!"

"Let's face it," a journalist once wrote of Stephen Gately, "there's not a lot going on there." But that's wrong. There's masses going on. He may not be an intellectual, but his mid teems with ideas ad impressions. He is a voracious reader, especially of self-help books, and he says he taught himself chakra healing. A great believer in the power of positive thinking, he says you can resist other's negativity- you have only to imagine sending energy to all the cells of your body. "Which is very difficult," he admits after a pause. "How many billion bloody cells do you have in your body?" And he cracks up with mirth.

He brims with this kind of humour. In the hotel lobby, later, as he peers at the trinkets in a glass display case, he is appalled by the price of a pair of gold clogs. "You'd expect to be able to wear them for that!" And he dissolves into laughter, as he imagines asking if they have them in size seven.

He is unashamedly soft, revealing that he hates to be apart from Eloy, loves his home, loves being "cosy". "I always have to have incense, and sometimes I light 40 candles a night. We used to be addicted to Jo Malone. She does these scented candles, and the smell! The grapefruit one is to die for!" I should say here to the teenage girls who even now write to Stephen to say "Marry me", "I'll be the one to change you", I think you're barking up the wrong tree. But what the hell? Stephen is thrilled to get the letters and reads every one.

I am glad for him that his life is so full. If coming out publicly was a test of nerve, the years ahead will be a test of resolve and of endurance. Here is the problem with the new boy bands: they can't grow into man bands, they're far too inorganic. It was, then, probably inevitable that the Boyzone five would be wanting, by now, to launch their solo careers. Some of them will do better than others. However, a report that Stephen Gately's solo career has "flopped" (by his old chums at The Sun) seems, to say the least, exaggerated. His first solo single, "New Beginning", made number three last May, and the album "only" made number four. A second single, "I Believe", sadly, peaked at number 11, although it featured on the soundtrack of the film Billy Elliot. His third single, "Stay", represents a change of direction. "For the last one, I was kind of suited up, and I want to go back to wearing casual stuff and being comfortable with myself," is how he describes it.

What can I say about the record? It's the kind of thing you'll like, if you like this kind of thing. What matters is that it appeals to his core audience, the Smash Hits readers. There is, further, the possibility that he'll return to his first love, the stage. Last year there was talk of him playing the lead in Billy Liar on Broadway. Stephen, himself, had set his heart on a speaking role in the first Harry Potter movie, and, though it was not to be, he says, "There's always part two. . ."

So acting could be the next big thing?

"Maybe, but I'll always sing. And I'll always write." He also has notions of doing an aromatherapy course. And of making candles. He might even publish his life story. And he ad Eloy would hope, some day, to adopt. "We would love to have a child. I've been very lucky, and I'd love to give some child the same opportunity, maybe give them a better life."

If it should all fall apart tomorrow, you sense, Stephen would be quite relaxed about it. He's risen above adversity before, after all. What is more, he seems to bear no ill to the rat who tried to sell him out to the papers. He says, "I think it's a really bad way of making money, selling stories on people," but he is content to leave revenge to fate.

He has even, rather sweetly, said that The Sun were "really cool" and "supportive" to him, that they gave him the "opportunity" to tell his story his way (opportunity, as in "out or be outed"). But, then, Stephen Gately is rather sweet.

"Can you get rid of anger easily?" I ask. "If somebody does something hurtful to you, can you just let it go?" "No," he says. "I'm very bitter." And he laughs and laughs.

Stephen Gately's new singles, 'Stay', is released on 7 May, on A & M Records.