Ronan Keating lets rip at former manager Louis Walsh in a new documentary that charts the rise and fall of Nineties boyband sensations Boyzone.
Boyzone: No Matter What, which airs on Sky on Sunday 2 February, charts the infighting that plagued the pop group’s members Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham, Shane Lynch and the late Stephen Gately.
It includes exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage, with Keating opening up about his past resentment towards Walsh over how his career was handled.
In 1999, the singer decided to pursue a solo career following the huge success of “When You Say Nothing At All”, which featured in Richard Curtis’s classic rom-com Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.
Keating explained that he decided to keep Walsh on but ended up feeling frustrated with the Irish manager, whose other clients have included Jedward, Johnny Logan and Westlife.
“He just got it wrong,” Keating said, MailOnline reports. “He made the wrong choices. He didn’t know where the f*** I was!”
Addressing Walsh’s venture into TV roles on reality shows such as Pop Idol and The X Factor, he continued: “Louis became a TV personality – he was given that chance because he was the manager of Boyzone.
“Things started falling into place and you realise, Louis is not a great manager. I gave him multiple opportunities to fix things. I have one shot at my career and he didn’t give a f***, it fell on deaf ears.”
However, Walsh defended his stance at the time and branded Keating a “middle of the road artist” who appealed to “older women”.
“That was his market, that was his line,” he said. “He said he didn’t want to be a karaoke artist and wanted to record and write his own songs and be a proper artist – that shocked me,” he said.
He admitted he had some regret about the fallout where he made a string of comments about Keating to the press after Keating fired him: “I called him talentless and things…”
“He knew how to hurt me, vicious, f***ing bitchy horrible things,” Keating said. “He tried to ruin me and my career.”
Ironically, Keating’s bandmates said in the same documentary that one of the reasons behind their split was resentment towards Walsh over his perceived favouritism towards Keating.
However, they were also exhausted from a gruelling workload, with Keating disclosing that they didn’t have more than three weeks off in six years.
Walsh then asked him to help manage Westlife while Boyzone were still together, exacerbating the tensions within the group.
Boyzone reunited in 2007, then again in 2018 to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a four-piece – following Gately’s death from a congenital heart defect while on holiday in Majorca in 2009.
They split for good in 2019, which the former members revealed in the documentary was due to tensions once again resurfacing.
In the explosive trailer, which aired earlier this month, Walsh appeared unapologetic as his former band said he promised them “the sun, moon and stars”.
“They believed their own publicity,” Walsh said. “They forgot I wrote it.”
A synopsis for the documentary reads: “They were one of the most successful and iconic boybands of all time – but behind-the-scenes, conflict and rivalry, betrayal and tragedy led to their falling apart.
“Now, thirty years on, all four remaining members - Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Shane Lynch and Michael ‘Mikey’ Graham, as well as their estranged manager, Louis Walsh – reveal the truth of what really happened, the extraordinary highs of their meteoric rise to fame, and the huge costs that being in a boyband had on each of them.”
Boyzone: No Matter What airs on Sunday 2 February on Sky Documentaries and NOW.
