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Interviews - Top Table - Miranda Sawyer – Dines with Ronan Keating at the Mandarin Oriental Each week our gastronome and friend to the stars invites a celebrity to lunch at a favourite haunt. So what will they order and how indiscreet will they be about their lives as the wine flows? With it’s top-hatted doormen, curly gold fittings and a foyer staircase designed for swishing down, the Mandarin Oriental is a traditional London Hotel. It would be intimidating if the staff weren’t so friendly or if, waiting for me at a table with Hyde Park views, was someone other than Ronan keating – a celebrity so polite that his PR can joke about it. ‘Oh, you’ll have a terrible time.’ He deadpans. ‘Ronan’s really difficult.’ Of course, he’s not; you could take him home to Mummy – if she didn’t mind swearing. The 27-year-old singer has direct opinions, a salty turn of phrase and is far from frightened of the F-word. It peppers his speech as he compares the Oriental – ‘a home away from home’ – with some of the hotels he stayed in when his former band, Boyzone first visited Britain in the early 1990s.
“So two lads stayed upstairs and three went outside and we threw all our bags out of the fourth-floor window like a bank job and we skipped off.” Now Ronan has no need to do a runner. He lives in comfort in Dublin with his model wife, Yvonne, and their two children, Jack, nearly six, and four-year-old Missy (real name Marie). They’re buying a London apartment because Ronan spends so much time here – “I commute, really” – but he’ll still use the Oriental because he likes it so much. The restaurant caters for every taste, from pizza or steak to Thai, Chinese and Indian dishes “It’s brilliant for the kids too,” he assures me, as he chooses a Thai green chicken curry. I plump for the Indian tiger prawns which are so big that when they arrive Ronan laughs; “They’re more tiger than prawns, aren’t they?” We stick to water because he has a tight schedule. That morning, he has flown over from Dublin and has been pretend shopping in Harrods for a German TV show; straight after lunch, He's nipping over to Putney to rehearse with his band. Then he'll hop onto the back of a motorcycle taxi to catch his plane back home. He's a hard worker and he's reaped the rewards; 12 consecutive Top Ten hits as a solo artist, in addition to the 16 he notched up with Boyzone. Last October, he released Ronan Keating: 10 Years Of Hits, which went straight to Number One, and he's sold in excess of 17 million albums around the world. But the graft is taking its toll. Last July, he collapsed in Vienna - "I got the car to pull over and I fell onto the pavement and went straight into spasm". It was a viral infection made worse by hyperventilation. Ronan spent more than a week in hospital: "It was a massive wake-up call." I went on 192 flights last year." he says. "Not good for you." So this year he's supposed to be taking it easy, 'getting out of peoples faces'. Still, he seems pretty busy to me. After he finishes his tour (the German leg is next week), he's devoting the rest of the year to writing a new album. He'll be collaborating with his songwriter friends - Ricky Ross, formerly of Deacon Blue; Greg Alexander, who wrote Life Is A Rollercoaster for Ronan; Callum McColl, Kirsty's brother and the guitarist in Ronan's band - and he's having a go solo. "I'm not that good a songwriter, but I've got a lot of material already, so I feel confident. I'm not going indie or rock, Jaysus, no it's all very melodic." Ronan's an easy lunch companion; he asks questions as often as he answers them, inquiring what I'm up to that weekend and enthusing about Manchester (where I'm from). He's exceptionally polite to the waiter, too - always a good sign, still, despite his interest in other people, we chat mostly about him; he's got such a lot on. In May, he's walking the length of Ireland for his breast cancer charity, the Marie Keating Foundation, named after his mother, who died of the disease. And he's heavily involved with the charity Christian Aid, He's also doing a screentest for a gangster film. "I might be rubbish - I've never had an acting lesson - but I'll see how I get on." As well as his career, there's family. For Valentine's Day, he sent Yvonne three bouquets - morning, afternoon and evening - and he was in the middle of organising a party to celebrate Missy's fourth birthday last Friday, which was set to be a pink and girly affair. "She'll get to sit on a Barbie throne, so she can't wait." said her doting daddy. It's time for Ronan to leave. Quick kiss, strong handshake, and he's off. A man going places. Fast. MANDARIN Oriental Hotel 66 Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7LA Tel: 020 7201 3723 RONAN: Thai green chicken curry with steamed rice, £13 MIRANDA Tandoori tiger prawns, stir-fried vegetables, nan bread and basmati rice, £15 SHARED Malvern water, £4.50 |
“We
stayed at every dump in London,” he says, his light blue eyes dancing. “When we
were working on the first album we’d run up a mad phone bill because we all
missed home – and we couldn’t pay.”