Blue eyes is back

By Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post - July 8th 2005

IF YOU look in the dictionary next to the word nice you should find a photo of a smiling blue-eyed Irishman named Ronan Keating.

Because there's no getting away from it that's what he is - although for a nice boy he sure likes the "f" word and is partial to a Jack Daniels.

One of few boyband members to have come through the experience unscathed, the boy from Dublin has had a highly successful solo career and is still beloved by fans of all ages.

Just last month Ronan, who plays the Summer Pops in Liverpool tonight, bolstered his good guy reputation by saving a young woman's life after she almost choked in a restaurant. "I didn't know that was in the papers. How did they find out about that?" he laughs wildly, when I congratulate him on his latest heroics.

Unlike the outlandish stories Ronan is used to seeing, this one was true. "Everyone was just sat there looking at this woman going blue. I was thinking she's going f--- blue man!

"I just had to jump up and I performed the Heimlich manoeuvre." So he has had some first aid training then? "No I saw it on TV," he laughs.

Hard as it is to believe we have been watching Ronan himself on TV for over 10 years now, ever since that rather embarrassing teenage debut on Ireland's Late Late show complete with beret, braces and bad dancing.

With Irish singing phenomenon part one Boyzone he had 16 top 10 hits, then on going solo notched up another 12, before going on to manage Irish singing phenomenon part two Westlife.

His greatest hits album 10 Years of Hits, released last year went to number one and he has sold over 17m albums to date.

It's quite a resume. All the more so when you consider Ronan is still two years shy of his 30th birthday.

"Yeah, 28-years-old. I just try to take one day at a time and try not to think about it to much," says Ronan.

"I have been incredibly lucky to have done everything I have done but I have got so much energy and there is still a lot of stuff that I want to do. I just have this passion inside of me to do all these things."

"I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, I want to act in a movie and I want to keep raising money to fight cancer."

The last of those ambitions is what drives Ronan these days. In 1998 his beloved mother Marie died from breast cancer and his world caved in.

For a time he sought solace in drink before eventually breaking down as he tried to keep up Boyzone's hectic schedule but turned his life around after establishing the Marie Keating Foundation to help raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research.

"The Foundation was our way of dealing with all the pain and negative energy of my mam's death," he explains. "We were all very angry about losing her and we didn't want mam to have died in vain."

Ronan's sister runs the foundation day to day and Ronan fundraises tirelessly through events such as the recent 400-mile charity trek across Ireland, which he completed at the beginning of last month.

It raised over £160,000 for the charity being the total from his last walk two years ago.

"It has been hard going at times and upsetting but worth every step we have walked and every dinner we have geld and all the effort that the family has put in to think of the lives we have saved," he offers.

Fame and fortune aside, it is clear from the way his voice falters when he talks about his mother that family is the most important thing to Ronan.

He has been married to model wife Yvonne - who he first met at the age of 10 - for more than seven years.

They have two children Jack, six and four-year-old Marie with a third baby due in September.

But for Ronan, himself the youngest of five, will that be enough?

"Who knows?" he laughs in his broad brogue. "We said we would stop at two but that moved to three. So who can say if we will stop at three!"

* RONAN KEATING plays the Summer Pops tonight.