Ronan Keating has shared his ongoing struggle to come to terms with the untimely death of his Boyzone bandmate, Stephen Gately. The popular boyband, which also included Shane Lynch, Keith Duffy, and Mikey Graham, was left devastated when Stephen passed away suddenly on October 10, 2009, at his holiday home in Majorca, aged just 33. Speaking to Miriam O’Callaghan on RTE Radio One, Ronan expressed his deep sense of "injustice".
"I find it very very very upsetting," he confessed. "I still haven’t come to terms with the loss of Steo, none of us have. The injustice that happened at the time - it’s just left me bitter. The fear that he had that the fans were going to turn their back on him or turn their back on the band because of him and they didn’t. It was the total opposite. I will never forget it.".
The 47 year old singer also recalled the heart-wrenching phone calls he made to inform his bandmates about Stephen’s passing. Stephen tragically died in 2009 aged 33. "It was 2009, I was in Chicago. I was about to run the Chicago Marathon and it was the night before and I was having a bowl of pasta with the rest of the runners with the charity and Gerald Kean called me," he remembered. "I’ll never forget it. Every single moment. It’s absolutely devastating.".
"The hardest part was hearing the boys – because I had to call the boys – It was the hardest part." He added: "The screams down the phone. It stayed with me for life. It’s horrific. And then the days that followed, it was an out of body experience. It’s hard to put it into words.".
