Ronan Keating on boyband fame in the 90s: 'Our duty of care meant nothing'
Ronan Keating on boyband fame in the 90s: 'Our duty of care meant nothing'
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Ronan Keating says the members of Boyzone were "unprotected" and in "a dangerous space" when they were propelled to fame over 30 years ago. Speaking at the worldwide premiere of Boyzone: No Matter What, the 47-year-old singer told Sky News: "We just played along with it all. I was 16, 17, 18 years of age. I was a child.".
Now a father of five, Keating goes on: "But as you get older and your children get older… you realise what we went through as kids and how unprotected we were and what a dangerous space it was.". In 1993, five working-class lads from Dublin, Ronan Keating, Stephen Gately, Keith Duffy, Shane Lynch and Mikey Graham were plucked from obscurity by talent manager Louis Walsh and moulded into stars.
Breaking into the UK charts the following year, they had conquered the world by the mid-1990s. Six number one hits and five number one albums followed, with 25 million records sold across the world. A master of promotion, former X Factor judge Walsh worked hard to keep the boys' names in the papers, but that exposure came at a cost.
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