+Interviews+

+I'm Not A Slag - Sneak Magazine+

(big thanx to Jac for typing this up for me! cheers hen!)

Poor Kian. While Shane’s off with Gillian, Nicky’s with Georgina, Bryan’s loved up with Kerry and Molly, and Mark’s off with whoever his manager’s linking him to this week (more on that later), Kian’s tucked up in bed with a mug of coca. Yeah, right! Life’s not so bad for Westlife’s most eligible bachelor (and “five-times-a-night stud” if the tabloids are to believed!). ‘I’m not very choosy,” he tells Sneak…

As the only single guy in Westlife, do you get jealous of the other band members’ relationships?
‘Yes and no. It’s hard when they’re lying in their beds with their girlfriends, cuddling up, and I’m just lying there by myself. But it works both ways.’

Are they jealous of your young, free and single lifestyle?
‘Maybe – when we’re out, and their girlfriends are calling them, ‘What time are you coming home?’ and ‘Who’s with you?’ they look at me and think, ‘He’s got it sussed!’ When you’re in a band and there’s girls hanging around, they worry people will get the wrong idea. But they don’t envy me, ‘cos if you fall in love, you fall in love.’

So, just how single are you?
‘I date girls on and off. I haven’t got into anything serious, but I do have relationships. Sometimes it’s three months, sometimes two weeks.’

Two weeks?!
‘You might see someone, then two weeks later you realise she ain’t here for the right reason, and you dump her. I went through a stage where I was meeting hundreds of girls who’d say, ‘When are you gonna bring me backstage, when are you gonna take me to a club with loads of famous people?’ You just think, ‘go away.’’

Do you ever worry about getting caught with girls?
‘It’s frustrating. You can get caught with someone and people always assume you’re in a big relationship, which is annoying.’

Are you looking for love?
‘I’d like to find it soon, but I don’t go out looking for it and I don’t get annoyed when I don’t find it. In a lot of interviews, I come across as a slag, but I’m not like that. I’m not choosy but if I see a girl in a club and she’s not up for it, it doesn’t mean I’m just going to go off and find another one. And if I was in a relationship, even if it was for just two weeks, I wouldn’t cheat.’

Is it easier for pop stars to have a ‘normal’ love life than it used to be?
‘Yeah. To be in a band like Take That (Robbie’s old band), you had to be a nice boy. Now boybands are a lot more ‘real’. To have a girlfriend or to be caught having sex was a sin, whereas nowadays it’s normal.’

Pop stars seem to be more open about their sex live nowadays
‘I think it’s disgusting! I’ve read interview with Blue and they’re quite harsh – going into details about what they do with women. It’s fine if that’s what they wanna do, but what I do with a girl is my business. And if someone asks me that in an interview I tell them that.’

But do you worry about details of your sex life suddenly appearing in the papers in a ‘kiss and tell’?
‘Of course I do. One was sold on Mark a while ago, and they can be really nasty. But I had on sold on me a few years ago and she was quite complimentary – said I was a five-times-a-night stud!”’

Was she telling the truth?
(Blushing modestly) ‘I don’t know…I can’t remember…You do worry, but what can you do? You can’t stop living your life. If there’s a terrible story in the paper, you have to say, ‘I’m not gonna stop living my life ‘cos I’m in a band’.’

What’s it like when you open a paper and your private business is there in the centre pages?
‘We usually find out beforehand, from our press officer. It used to piss us off but now it really doesn’t. Mark was just like ‘whatever’. We’re all the same.’

Did you take the mick out of Mark (the report said he had a small, er, ‘wee-hily’!) when you saw it?
No. You don’t know what that person’s feeling inside, so you don’t want to hurt their feelings. Mind you, we’d take the piss out of Bryan and we’d take the piss out of everyone except Mark, probably. He’s not necessarily sensitive but he take things in a different way.’

And if you get a good one do you leave the paper lying open for the other lads to read?
‘Ha ha ha! No – even if someone’s calling you a ‘five-times-a-night stud!’ I don’t want people reading about my sex life, That’s private.’

Does the idea that people might read about your ‘performance’ in the papers make you nervous when you’re with a girl?
(Blushing) ‘Yeah, every male is worried about that kinda stuff.’

Is there anywhere you can get away with ‘having fun’ without it getting in the papers?
We used to think Sweden was OK, but it’s not, ‘cos that girl who sold her story on Bryan was Swedish. What worries me is, we’re going into clubs for over 21’s, and there are 16 year old girls in there. They’re all dolled up and they’ll tell you they’re 19 or 22.’

What do you do?
‘You believe them or you don’t. But it’s worrying you don’t know how old these girls are now!’

Do girls ever try to pull you so they can sell the story?
‘If we’re in a club, there’ll be plenty of girls thinking, ‘I’m gonna try and get him into bed so I can sell the story.’ I’ve got plenty of them out.’

How can you tell?
‘It’s suspicious if a girl’s coming on really strong. You get everything – girls flashing their boobs in your face, girls saying, ‘I’, not wearing nay knickers’. And sometimes a girl will be wearing a short skirt and will lift it up so you can see everything. It’s not the best way to pull a bloke but they believe blokes think about sex and nothing else. When I’m in a club, the last thing on my mind is sex. I want to have a bit of fun.’

Kian on Shane & Gillian
‘They’re cool. I must say at first I had some reservations. I used to try to stop Shane from seeing Gillian because she’s my cousin and I was really close to her. When we were 16 and we were performing in the musical Grease together, they nearly started going out. But I’d say things like, ‘Aah Gillian, you don’t wanna go there, you won’t get one,’ and ‘Oh, Shane, she’s a real…whatever!

‘Then I ended up putting the, together! Gillian came round and I said, ‘Shane’s upstairs – I think there’s something going on there,’ and she said, ‘Oh yeah?’

‘It’s so cool that two of my bet friends are going out together, and it’s good ‘cos he knows if he ever does anything wrong he’d never get away with it!’

Kian on Nicky & Georgina
‘Georgina’s a very quiet, nice girl. I’ve met her dad Bertie (Aherne, the Irish Prime Minister, no less!) a couple of times and he seems like a regular guy – the type who likes a pint down his local pub on a Sunday afternoon’

‘Georgina and Nicky seem to have a good loving, relationship with each other. They play about in public, and they’re like little kids when they’re together. She calls him ‘Nousey’ – Nicky Nouse – and puts on this baby voice. Actually, Shane and Gillian do that as well!’

‘They’ve been going out with each other for seven and a half years and they are the best of friends – that’s probably the best way of describing them. To be honest, I don’t see a day when either of them are without each other in their lives, ever. They’re true soul mates’ aww, bless!

Kian on Bryan, Kerry & Molly
‘Bryan and Kerry have been through a tough time, but they’re cool. You can see Kerry now and she’s bubbly as heel. She’s finished her TV show and she’s really happy.’

‘Molly is a great gift. She’s done an awful lot for both of them – and for the rest of us. She’s brought back the real values of life to us. It’s not just about the success and the band – there’s a hell of a lot more.’

Kian on Mark
‘Mark’s not in a relationship either. That thing with Cathy Newell from Bellefire? That was just a press thing – that’s just Louis Walsh (Westlife and Bellefire’s manager!). I didn’t get linked with Bellefire ‘cos I told Louis not to do it!’

‘Mark and I go out quite a lot now. When the boys are out with their girls we go out and have a laugh. We’re quite good mates at the moment – we’ve got no problem just going to the bar for a drink, just the two of us. Its cool!’

‘I kinda notice Mark getting a bit lonely once in awhile, but I think he’s coping well. He’s very close to his mum, and he’s the kind of person to ring her up, and say ‘I’m f*cking pissed off.’ I would never talk to my mum about problems like, ‘I’m pissed off today ‘cos Bryan did this to me’, but Mark would do all that.’