A few days before, I’d been at a Sligo Rovers football match and some kid had come up to me and said, ‘Watch out, so-and-so is after you ‘cos he heard you called his mum a whore.’ He was talking about the local hard knock. I just knew this little shit would later say to that same hard knock, ‘I saw Kian Egan at the football match and he called your mother a whore.’
Anyway, we were in the arcade and I noticed this hard knock and five of his mates across the way. They were all staring at me.
‘Gillian, let’s go. Come on.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s yer man who is after me.’
‘Why don’t you just go up to him and say something?’ Gillian didn’t stand for no messing.
‘No, no, come on, let’s just go.’
I grabbed her arm and we walked out of the arcade, but I could sense immediately that they were following us. By the time we’d walked down the street and round the corner, they’d caught up with us.
I was shitting myself.
‘Egan! Egan! Did you call my mother a whore?’
‘No, I did not. I don’t even know who you are, I’ve never seen you before in my life.’ Then I said, ‘My mum is waiting for me to go and pick some shoes.’
No good.
‘Meet me in the car park in 15 minutes. We’ll sort this out,’ he said.
This was ridiculous.
‘Look, if you want to hit me, do it now. I don’t want to wait 15 minutes, just do it now.’
I’m not gonna pretend – I was absolutely shitting my pants. I was terrified.
He took a swing and I reacted, finally. I blocked him and then hit back…hard. I just laid into him and really let loose. It was three years of frustration coming out. He’d picked on me on the wrong day.
But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Word spread that I would hit back and some of these idiots saw that as a challenge. So when I got a little older, going to nightclubs and getting well pissed was always a bit risky. I often went out with my friend Graham, who would later join me at the start of the Westlife tale, and he was a hard lad, very capable of looking after himself. He had a bit of a reputation because he was from a slightly rougher part of town. If I was with him, people would leave me alone – he used to say, ‘If you hit him, I’ll hit you!’ However, if I went out alone or without Graham, it could get very nasty. Many times I would arrive at a club, spot a few faces in the crowd and just do a U-turn and leave.
Sometimes, however, confrontation was unavoidable, but even then I tried my best not to hit back unless I absolutely had to. Generally, I would let someone hit me three times before striking back. I figured if they hit me more than three times, I had to do something to defend myself. I would always say, ‘I don’t want to fight you, let’s leave it,’ but sometimes I was in a corner.
Since I’m being very open here, I must say that I was never going to move onto the next level: physically abusing people. I didn’t want to punch anybody, I was never a fighter, I only ever hit someone because I had no choice, you know, I was defending myself. Just sitting talking about the shit I let myself go through with these guys is annoying, it makes me angry. Kids shouldn’t have to deal with all that.
I know I have the benefit of hindsight now, but I think those difficult times made me a much stronger person today. I think they taught me a hell of a lot about life at a young age and helped me to be the person I am.
Since Westlife has become successful, one or two of these guys have come up to me in Sligo, apologized for their behaviour and offered to buy me a pint. I haven’t taken the pints, but it’s interesting to see the change.
I am being brutally honest with you when I say that I did sometimes turn on those who were smaller than me. I never hit anyone, but I did call people names. It made me feel better, albeit momentarily, I’m afraid to say. I was stuck in the middle between the older, tougher boys who would kick the living daylights out of you and the quieter guys, often from the country, who came into school. It was a strange cruel pecking order. One day we pushed a kid into the shower with his brand new tracksuit and trainers on. His name was Mark Feehily.
CHAPTER TWO WARM EVENINGS, CRISP MORNINGS, EARLY BEGINNINGS
My Feehily family home was a four-bedroomed bungalow in the countryside near Sligo. It was a rural upbringing and I loved every minute of it.
Both my parents, Oliver and Marie Feehily, worked. Mum was a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture; Dad worked in the building trade. She worked nine to five, but once she clocked out of that job, she clocked into motherhood and providing a taxi service for her kids. I was born Mark Patrick Michael Feehily on 28 May 1980, followed by my younger brothers Barry and Colin. We just lived too far out of town to walk or cycle in every day, so Mum used to drive us around constantly.
I spent a lot time at my granny’s house when both my parents were out at work. She lived in a cottage on a big farm in acres of idyllic Irish countryside. That was even more remote than my home, but I loved it and loads of my cousins used to go round there too. It was brilliant. My dad’s mum is just the most loving woman in the world.
My mum’s mum lived on the other side of Sligo, so we saw her on a Sunday usually. Granddad was the landlord of a famous pub in Sligo town, which is where my mum grew up. Everyone knew him, so if I said I was Paddy Verdon’s grandson, they’d know who I was straight away. Verdon’s Bar on the Mall was very well known and Granddad was a big personality, he loved his grandkids very much. He was just this loving character full of stories – we would listen to him absolutely glued. He once told us that he had about 50 stallions kept on a mountain top. They were beautiful stories that he’d tell. He was extremely handy, too; he used to make furniture, all sorts. He had all the modern things too – TVs, videos. I remember he had a hi-fi that was way ahead of its time and I recall blasting The Bodyguard soundtrack out of it! Nana was lovely too. She was an amazing cook and every Sunday we’d eat this amazing home-baked brown bread with cheese, and ham sandwiches. Both sets of grandparents were very positive, incredibly loving aspects of my childhood. They were like an extension of my parents.
At my own home, when Mum and Dad came back from work we’d all congregate in the kitchen or living room and the telly would be blasting out, people would be doing homework or playing and there’d be loads of chatting – it was never a case of everyone going to their own rooms. It was a very close-knit, exciting, loving family.
I spent my youth walking in triangles. One point was our bungalow, another point was my granny’s house and the third point was school. And that little triangle was surrounded by fields and farms. That was my world. It’s funny now, because I might hop on a plane to Los Angeles with the band or for a holiday and not bat an eyelid, but back then a trip into Sligo on a Saturday was a major treat.
Since we’ve become well known, a lot of attention has been given to Sligo. Some journalists like to make out it’s a very rural small-time town in the west of Ireland. That’s just a cliché. It isn’t. Some people did stay there and work the same jobs as their parents, yes, but loads of others went off and found fantastic new careers elsewhere. It had a good mixture of shops and plenty of culture – pubs and clubs where they played all kinds of music. It was – and still is – a place where the arts literally thrive, especially music. There are lots of artists and singers. Michael Flatley’s dad comes from Sligo, W. B. Yeats spent much of his childhood and wrote poetry there and Spike Milligan lived there in Holborn Street.