WORDS Jason O’Toole

PHOTOS Nix

YOU COULDN'T
MAKE IT UP
They came out of nowhere to top the charts in Ireland
and the UK, selling well in excess of a million records
in the process. But since fortune first began to smile
on them, when they signed their record deal in the USA,
acclaimed Dublin outfit THE SCRIPT have been plunged
into an extraordinary saga of injury, death, personal
loss and heartbreak, so strange and terrifying that if
you put it in a movie, no one would believe it.

W ith The Script’s debut album rapidly

closing in on a phenomenal 1.5 million
sales since its release last August,
you could be forgiven for seeing the group
as some kind of overnight success. After all,
even people in the know hadn’t heard much
of this Dublin-born trio prior to the release
of their first record. But the truth is that The
Script’s extraordinary story has been over a
decade in the making. Indeed their path to
fame has been so littered with booby traps,
and so thoroughly fraught, that it’s a miracle
they managed to finish their album, let alone
turn it into a million-selling chart-topper.
“It’s a crazy, crazy story,” Danny
O’Donoghue acknowledges, settling into a
leather seat in the private function room
upstairs in the Spring and Airbrake club in
Belfast. “Literally, it happened against all the
odds.”
He offers the kind of pensive smile that has
had girls swooning all over the world. As the
frontman in the band, he’s also the resident
heart-throb, the one who’s always to the
fore in the pictures and whose face adorns
bedroom walls and computer wallpaper(s)
alike.
It’s a little over an hour before the group
are due to play downstairs in front of a
packed venue, but already we can see a queue
of impatient fans spilling around the block.
We’d planned to do the interview in the
band’s dressing room. However, we’ve had
to move upstairs in order to be able to hear
one another over the screaming teenage girls
congregating at the emergency exit doors.
It’s quieter here, and the mood encourages
reflection. During the time we’re together,
Danny will revisit his childhood and on
occasion peer through the looking glass
darkly, calling up memories usually
left dormant.

V enice Beach LA. This was where The Script
intended to record their first album, in
Danny’s own home studio, close to the sea.
It was hard to believe. He and Mark Sheehan, the
main songwriter in the band, had been living in
the States for over five years. That’s how long it had
taken them to secure a recording deal for The Script.
Five whole years. But they had the contract now.
Plus they knew a drummer, Glen Power, back in
Dublin itching for an escape route after a lifetime on
the covers band circuit. When they were preparing
the demos they’d given him a call and he was on the
earliest flight he could find. This was going to be
an adventure. Glen felt it in his bones and he was
right. He just didn’t know how awfully big it would
become.
What happened in the ensuing months, however,
was so far removed from the rising sense of
anticipation it was impossible to comprehend.
Within weeks of getting a deal signed, The Script
were plunged into a nightmare. A complicated,
prolonged nightmare.
“We’d recorded just scraps and ideas in the studio
in my house and we were kind of coming to terms
with what type of album this was going to be,”
Danny says before pausing... “And – bang! – right in
the middle of that Mark’s mother became terminally
ill. We were going through what felt like the most
joyous fucking days of our lives and we now had this
to deal with. She had cancer and there was no hope.
40
It was a kick in the fucking teeth. We were at a
crossroads. So we asked Mark, ‘Are you willing to be
in America while your mum’s slowly passing away
in Ireland?’ And he was like, ‘No, I’m not’.”
Danny knew he’d have reacted in the same way.
The band decided to return to Dublin and to work
on the album in the recording studio Mark had built
– with the help of Danny – in his mother’s back
garden. The studio was situated at the rear of St
James’ Hospital. You could look over the wall and see
the ambulances wheeling in and out. Mark’s mother
had been taken there. They already knew it was only
a matter of time.
“During the day Mark was in with us writing
away,” Danny recalls. “We were really just using
the studio as a punch bag – he was so pent up with
emotion that he’d come in and write shite one day
and the next day he’d come in with a fucking gem
of really truthful, honest stuff. It was hard, man. It
was hard for him. But it was hard for us too – to see
your best mate going through something like that.
Behind it all, you really want him to have his head
clear for the big prospect of the first album. We were
producing and writing it – we had enough rope to
hang ourselves here. And his mother kept getting
progressively worse and worse.”
The songwriting became far darker and edgier than
might have been anticipated.
“Out of that period songs like ‘The End Where I
Begin’ started to crop up,” Danny says. “These one
line phrases that we felt were so important like
'Sometimes tears say all there is to say.' That was just a line
you’d put a full stop on, and move onto the next
statement. 'Sometimes your first scars won’t ever fade away.'
A lot of times people would listen to the likes of ‘The
Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ or ‘Talk You Down’ and
probably think it was about the end of a relationship
– it is in a way, but it’s about that mother-son
relationship, it’s about that father-daughter
relationship, it’s about that relationship between
people in a family and when one person dies.”
For Mark, this was second time around. He’d seen
the grim reaper in action before.
“His father died at a very young age,” Danny
explains. “‘The End Where I Begin’ is about that
time where it could have been the end of him as a
person. It was a very impressionable age for Mark.
So his mother was the umbilical cord to where he’d
come from. So when she finally passed away that
was gone. She’d heard a lot of the songs, which was
good. She felt the head of steam that was building
up and it was just a joy for her to get to see Mark
happy. He was married now to someone he really
loved...”
If there was comfort in knowing all of that, the
band’s equilibrium didn’t last for long. Within
four months of Mark’s mother’s death, the trio
faced another crisis when Danny’s own father died
suddenly.
“I’d been in the States for about seven or eight
years,” Danny reflects. “Coming back really sparked
up the relationship with my dad again. Little did I
know that, the time Mark was spending with his
mother, I didn’t have long left with my own dad
either. It happened out of the blue. One day he came
home from work with stomach pains...”
Talking about it isn’t easy. Danny takes a deep gulp
of the Belfast air and carries on.
“He was dead by 12 o’clock that night. He had
a stomach aneurysm that went unchecked for a
long time. From the slow death of Mark’s mother,
we went to this, just four months later,” he says,
clicking his finger. “My dad was here one day, gone
the next. Right in the middle of our first album.
Hard to believe.”
He shakes his head.
“You don’t know where the fuck you’re at. You
kind of think, ‘Right, I’m after holding it together
with my friend going though it’ – and here I was
now, going through it myself. It was a very, very
emotional time for the band. Who knows? Who
knows what way the album would’ve gone if that
hadn’t happened. What we went through definitely
poured out, and into the album. It was like hammer
blow after hammer blow. We actually sat around as a
band and went, ‘Are we up to this task?’ Then, when
it was all over, we came out of that time with guns
a-blazing.”
Their bad luck hadn’t run out yet. Their single
‘We Cry’ – which ultimately went top ten in Ireland
and top twenty in the UK – was starting to pick up
airplay. They were about to kick off their first major
British tour. And then they were hit with another
hammer blow.
“I woke up with a pain in my side,” Danny says.
“It was, ‘What the fuck is that? Jaysus!’ I got up out
of bed and went down to have breakfast but it felt
like somebody was fucking pulling my lung from
one side.”
Danny staggered across the road to his local GP,
who dropped a bombshell.
“He said, ‘You need to go to the hospital straight
away, kiddo, your lung’s collapsed!’”
Danny shakes his head, again in disbelief.
At St. Vincent’s Hospital, he remembers being
greeted by a nurse.
“Oh, good Jaysus,” she said. He can still hear her
voice now, the panic in it. He was rushed to the
operating theatre. In minutes the surgeon was there
(l-r) The Script: Mark Sheehan, Danny O'Donoghue & Glen Power
with his knife.
“Within an hour the operation was done,” Danny
resumes. “I had a tube in my fucking lung basically
to pump it back up to its normal size. It was this
thing called Spontaneous Pneumothorax. If you’re
tall and skinny you’re the fucking poster boy for it. It
just happens to some people.”
T he gig is over. Belfast has been wooed. The
band have made their mark, with a stunning
live performance. Now the screaming girls
have gone home, only a few stragglers remaining
outside in the hope of getting a glimpse of their
idols. Drummer Glen Power has taken the seat
occupied by Danny earlier and he’s recalling his part
in the dramas that engulfed the band during those
astonishing months. It was as if someone had put a
hex on them.
Out for a few pints with his parents, Glen popped
into the toilet and slipped, smashing his head on the
washbasin before falling down and banging it again
on the marble floor. When he came to, Glen got up,
and went back into the lounge, insisting that he was
fine. His father, who knew someone who’d fallen
into a coma following a similar incident, insisted
on taking Glen to the hospital. It was a decision that
saved the drummer’s life.
Power had been under observation for about eight
hours when things became really bad.
“I got the most unmerciful fucking pain in my
head,” he recalls. “Then my nose started bleeding,
my hearing went in my right ear. They scanned my
head and said, ‘We need to operate on him right
away’. I’d fractured my head in two places, which
caused the blood vessels underneath the skull to
burst and caused hematoma.”
It’s what happened earlier this year to the actress
Natasha Richardson, but they didn’t get her to
hospital quickly enough. Glen was rushed to
Beaumont for an emergency craniotomy. His father
was told that he could slip into a coma or, worse still,
might die if the operation wasn’t a success.
“I went from having a pint to looking a doctor in
the eye who said, ‘We need to do this fast; if we don’t
you’re going to have a stroke or a heart attack. Will
you sign this form?’ When they told me what they
were going to do I cried and then I started laughing.
I was like, ‘I don’t believe it! Things are starting to go
well. I’m finally getting somewhere with the band
and now this!’”
It wasn’t funny.
“I was nine days in hospital and I was dizzy
when I came out; I couldn’t walk in a straight line.
The minute I woke up, I went, ‘I’ve got a gig next
Thursday’. That’s the first thing I said (laughs). I have
titanium plates in my head. It taught me a lot and
has calmed me down. I don’t worry about things like
I used to. For me, it’s like extra time. I feel like I’m in
a football game with extra time.”
No wonder it was such a buzz when The Script’s
eponymous debut album hit No.1 in both the UK
and Ireland. The band had wrestled with some
extraordinary demons along the way but they knew
that they had come up trumps all the same – that
they had made a great record.
“I remember the day it happened,” Danny
resumes. “Our manager called to say, ‘You’re No.1!’
And I dropped the phone – I was overcome because
everything was flooding back. My da. Mark’s ma.
It was a flood of emotions. Without a shadow of a
doubt, it was the best day of my life. I was talking
to my da that morning – who was obviously up in
heaven – but I was talking to him, saying, ‘Thank
you’.”
The emotions come flooding back again now. Only
this time mixed with a new sense of pride.
“After all the things that have gone on, there’s not
one thing that can stop this band,” Danny states.
“People are asking, ‘Do you fight in the band?’ That
doesn’t even come into it when you’ve been through
the stuff we’ve been through together. It’s been
destiny, but it hasn’t been handed to us – we’ve
clawed our way to every bit of the success that we’ve
had. It’s quite easy on a first listen to dismiss what
this band is. You can presume that we didn’t produce
it; you can presume that we didn’t write it; you
can presume that we were put together by a record
company. You can presume all these things. None of
that is true.
“What you’re hearing now, that’s the true story of
The Script. It’s only when you come and see us live,
and when you sit down and actually talk to us, that
you realise there’s a lot more to this than the facade.
There’s this image that’s been put on us – and I love
it in a way. Because we’re clean living lads. We’re
not out there doing drugs. We’re something that I
believe Ireland can really get behind. But that’s not
the whole story.”
In fact the twists and turns that got them to where
they are today – up there at the top of the music
game – start way, way back. Danny was the “sixth
child of six children.” He grew up in Ballinteer, in
south county Dublin, in a household that was full of
musicians. His father Shay was a prominent pianist
who composed and produced music. His brothers
– Ian and Dara – were both in bands, the latter
enjoying moderate success with The Big Geraniums.
“It set the tone for me as a musician – monkey see,
monkey do,” he laughs. “How do you get attention in
the family? Either you shout really loud or you sing!
Anywhere you looked in our house there was a guitar
or a bass and if you were angry you were banging on
the piano and got your feelings out that way.”
Danny always felt he was destined to carve out a
career in music. Indeed, he was so confident about it
that he dropped out of school at 16. Soon afterwards,
he landed a part-time teaching gig at Digges Lane
Studios. The Script’s driving force Mark Sheehan also
worked there as a dance instructor.
“A friend told me about a guy in Digges Lane selling
music equipment – it was Mark. I’d also heard about
him as a hip hop dancer. Anyone who was cool
around that time was doing something in Digges
Lane. Mark was one of the main teachers – a lot of
stars, including Colin Farrell and even Prince Naseem
did his class.
“It was one of those meetings of minds. A eureka
moment. I was like, ‘You’re into hip hop? I’m into
hip hop. You’re into fucking making music, I’m into
making music’. It was a big deal because back then
everybody was into rock and if you were into hip hop,
it was like, ‘Fuck off!’ Especially in Dublin. Back then
we were trying to fly that flag high, for fucking hip
hop. Two skinny white kids. I could see Mark was a
star. So, I ended up partnering up with him.”
A good call, as it happens...
M ark Sheehan takes his turn in the seat and
begins to reel in the years. It’s dark outside
and you can hear the wind buffeting the signs.
From the hard end of town, he talks in a streetwise
vernacular, looking back over the wrong turns
he took – aware always of the even worse ones he
avoided. It goes way, way back with him too, but in a
different way. Music saved his life, gave it meaning.
Of that he’s sure. He’s survived some hairy scrapes
and lived to tell the tale. That’s what he’s here to do.
Growing up in Dublin’s inner city, Mark spent
his formative years running with the pack. He was
involved with the local possee in all sorts of nefarious
activities that would have been enough to put him
behind bars if he’d been a few years older.
“I was a little bollix when I was a kid,” Mark
admits, leaning forward in the seat. “At one point,
when I was sixteen, when I came home from school
– and I was after doing the fucking worst thing:
stealing money from the family – there were two
detectives sitting in the house with my ma. They told
me they were taking me away to a home! I think they
were trying to scare me, to be honest. I was getting
to that stage, in fairness, that they wanted to put me
away. From that point I felt, ‘I’ve got to clean the act
up here. I can’t be a victim of this environment for
any longer’.”
For a pop star in a band with a clean-cut image,
Mark is refreshingly candid about the unsavoury
stuff he got up to in his teens.
“I got involved in everything, in all the stupid shit.
We got involved in robbing cars; we got involved
in fucking setting stuff on fire; we got involved in
breaking into places. But thank God I was under 16
41

and I wasn’t able to be put away for too long. I was
literally doing stupid stuff like that, shoplifting and
all.”
Mark’s father died when he was a young child. His
mother raised him on her own. Does he think the
absence of his father contributed to his rebellious
streak?
“It may have been a bit of that, yeah, but I
think to some extent everyone’s a victim of their
environment,” he proffers. “It was the climate. Me
and my mates were doing boys stuff. Stupid stuff.
Down in the local junkyard fucking wrecking stuff.
Getting focused on stupid stuff that didn’t mean
anything. One year we got so focused on having the
biggest Halloween bonfire – if that meant robbing
a car and putting it in the middle of the fucking
bonfire, that’s what it meant.”
He also believes that he was extremely lucky not to
end up with a drug problem. What was he taking?
“Where I grew up, you dabble pretty much in all
the stupid stuff, you know? Across the spectrum. Go
wherever you want, you know? Really stupid shit.
You do these things as a teenager. You make your
mistakes. You try stuff.
“When I look back at my school years, if there’s ten
of us left that are not in jail, that are not on fucking
drugs, that are not in some serious situation, I’d be
very surprised. I meet the lads all the time and it’s
shocking when you see the (very small) ratio of people
that have actually done well.”
He fixes me with a look.
“I think whatever industry you put me into I’d be
seriously good at,” he says, running his hand over
his shaved head. “I’d be an amazing junkie or an
amazing fucking criminal. But this is the point:
put me in this industry and this is why I’m really
good at it – because kids from those areas are sharp
as fucking nails. They’ve got a great business sense.
It’s unfortunate that they direct that into the wrong
thing sometimes.
“Thank God, in the end, mine was directed into
the right thing and I had a good family behind me
42
to kick my arse into place. This is going to sound
like a fucking cliché, but music has saved my life,
because every time I felt like I’d nothing – at my
darkest moments – I was writing songs about that.
I like to say my interest in music was an accident!
The condom broke in the music industry when I was
growing up (laughs). I had no interest in music, I was
more into arts and crafts. So I was about 15 when I
got involved in music – in the fun side of it: dancing
and singing.”
Soon after he’d been bitten by the music bug, Mark
built a recording studio in his back garden. He and
Danny spent most of their time there, writing songs
and dreaming about hitting the big time. With some
tracks in the can, they approached U2 manager Paul
McGuinness, who they’d met during their time in
Digges Lane.
“Dan and I fancied ourselves as a kind of two-
piece acoustic thing,” Mark explains. “I took it into
McGuinness and sat down in his office and he let
us play it for him. I think he thought he was just
giving two kids a shot, but I don’t think he was that
interested. I was probably going on 17 at the time.
But I do think McGuinness saw something in us –
that these kids were actually producing and writing
their own shit. He used to say, ‘I can’t believe you’re
doing everything on these recordings’. We were
mixing and writing and doing all that stuff.”
McGuinness signed the duo, who decided to call
themselves MyTown, and scored a record deal. Their
debut album was released on Universal in 2000, and
Danny and Mark found themselves in the States,
touring with Christina Aguilera, among others. It
was a learning experience. But they never achieved
lift-off and after about four years, decided to call it
a day.
“The first single did quite well but not well enough
to continue with the project,” says Danny. “I think
that we were too R‘n’B for the English market at the
time and not R‘n’B enough for the American market.
We were kind of walking this tightrope: the sound
wasn’t defined enough. We were just coming into
our own – experimenting. It was like what The Script
is but at a very embryonic stage. People ask, ‘Do you
regret it?’ What the fuck is there to regret? We were
asked by Paul McGuinness, could he manage the
project? And then we got signed to Universal for a lot
of money. I think we were probably given a little too
much control of our first album. We were kids.”
Given that background, it was a thrill when The
Script were asked to support U2 at Croke Park in July.
“U2 and Principle are so good to us,” Mark
enthuses. “Even last week they sent us a lovely letter
in New York to say, ‘Good luck’, and a nice basket of
Guinness and champagne. They always support us
in that way. There were so many bands U2 could’ve
chosen and they chose us for Ireland. It’s huge for
us. In the States they had a press conference about a
month ago and Edge and Bono were asked who their
favourite band was – and they mentioned us as one
of them. They know the power of that coming from
their mouth means a lot for a new band.”
Danny picks up the narrative.
“When we were in America doing the MyTown
thing we were also building up contacts. We were
down with Teddy Riley for a while. We always had
an open-ended question of: ‘If we came back is there
a possibility of doing something?’ and there were
open arms. ‘Absolutely. If the band ever disbands,
come down and we’ll build a studio on the side of
our studio. You can be our pop writers’. So, we just
struck up loads of friendships with some of the best
producers in the world.”
“Danny and I felt disheartened,” Mark adds,
“because Universal had fucked up, to be honest.
They were going through a huge merger with
Polydor and we got caught in the whole merger
scene. We were the only new band to be kept on
after the merger. Myself and Danny thought that
we had something but – and it’s a stereotypical story
– it got changed all the time. They changed what we
had and, in the end, we just lost heart. We thought,
‘Fuck it! We’ll get out of here’. I was so disheartened
that I moved to Orlando and started writing and
producing for other bands.”
Danny decided to follow Mark to Florida after
they were approached by Johnny Wright – the man
behind The Backstreet Boys, NSync and Britney – to
write tracks for Rihanna, his latest music protégé at
the time. They also found themselves penning tunes
for other bands, picking up work as session players,
and even remixing dance tracks.
“We got our names in notable places,” Danny says.
“I played guitar on TLC’s last record, the tribute
to Lisa Lopez. Justin Timberlake was probably the
biggest one – a remix for a song he’d done called
‘Gone’. It was massive club single. We did remixes
for Britney. A lot of these didn’t surface but we’d
release them on white labels.
“We just started building up this name,” he
continues. “They used to call us ‘The Irish Guys’. It
was an anomaly of two white Irish dudes in the hip
hop scene doing remixes of all these different styles.
Fuck, it was hilarious man. We were writing and
producing – just sharpening the tools. That took the
bones of four or five years.
“We were definitely chancers. Out and out
chancers,” Danny adds with a chuckle. “It was
almost like that James Street mentality of ‘if you
don’t ask, you won’t get’. We’d be in meetings in
America where – especially in an R‘n’B/hip hop
sense – you walk in and it’s all about your persona,
it’s all about how you carry yourself in the room;
what you’re wearing; what chains you’ve got on;
what fucking shoes you’re rocking in there with.
I remember going in with a Rolex I’d borrowed off
a friend that was broken, with bad ass shoes but
there’s a big hole down the fucking back of them
and you’re just hoping you don’t put your feet on the
table, or nobody asks you what time it is! But that’s
(Clockwise from left) Dannys girlfriend Irma Mali, Edge & Bono with Paul McGuinness, and Rhianna
the way it was. At the time you’re shitting yourself
that you’re going to get found out – in retrospect I
can’t believe half the things we did.”
After about five years of slugging it out in the US,
Danny had a strong desire to return to centre-stage.
“There’s something about a lead singer that
doesn’t really let go – that wants that fucking
stage,” he laughs. “When I hung my microphone
up for a while, I was looking at singers on stage or
TV thinking, ‘I can fucking do better than them!
Bastards!’ As you always do. So, we were coming at
the industry from another side, and then I decided to
go out front myself.
“We felt that there was something missing,” Danny
adds. “The heart and soul you pour out trying to
write the lyrics, and then you’ve got someone else
coming in to sing them who doesn’t understand the
song. To sing a song you have to be a great actor, in
the way of learning someone’s else’s words; it has to
be coming from the same spot or else it doesn’t move
the crowd.”
Initially, they’d envisaged the songs Mark was
composing would be used in a solo project for Danny.
Dissatisfied with using an electronic drum beat
on the tracks, Mark persuaded Glen – a gigging
drummer who’d worked with everybody from
Don Baker to Brendan O’Carroll – to fly over from
Dublin for a short break to lay down the drums on
the tracks. Satisfied with the demo, Danny and
Mark approached Steve Kipner who had just signed
Natasha Bedingfield and was starting his own label
Phonogenic.
“We went down to see Steve either about signing
me or what myself and Mark were doing,” Danny
says. “We had our own mini-label and were
developing acts; we had a girl band and a rapper on
the books. We played the stuff for Steve and he said,
‘Fucking hell! Have you played this for anyone else?
Don’t! Please don’t!’ And we were like, ‘Is it that
bad?!’ He said, ‘Seriously, don’t play it for anyone
else. I’m calling in the other two guys in the label.
Would you mind just battening down the hatches
and we’ll do a showcase within a week. You can have
the music back by then. You can shop it around or
whatever – but please give us first look on this’. So,
we said, ‘Yeah. Steve’s been a good friend of ours’.
We ended up calling Glen, who’d gone home in
the meantime while we finished up the songs and
saying, ‘Look, they think we’re a band (laughs)’.”
They were going to have to pretend.
W hile The Script suffered a litany of setbacks
during the recording of their multi-platinum
selling album, Danny O’Donoghue was also
on the edge for a different reason: he was coming to
terms with the end of his first serious relationship,
one that he’d thought would be forever.
“I’m talking about when you know it’s love,” he
says disarmingly. “Up until that point there was
a succession of liking people that were out of my
league – I was definitely punching above my weight
a lot. A lot of broken hearts. But this time, we were
together for four years. She was the one I was going
to be with for the rest of my life. It was definitely a
growing-up experience for me.
“She had a child at the time, which was a very
weird experience for me – coming into the fold. It
was almost like history repeating itself – my father
had done something very similar with my mum.
My mum’s first son, Ian, was from a previous
relationship. I only became aware of the similarities
in retrospect. But my first relationship was very
much mirrored on my dad. I idolised my dad, so I’d
hate to say that I planned it because...”
Danny pauses for a moment before carefully
selecting his next sentence. “I don’t want to sound
like I was following in my dad’s footsteps – like with
the musician thing – but I’m sure on some level,
maybe subconsciously, that happened. My dad was
a fucking saint to me. He took my mother in and
we never knew the difference between us and my
brother Ian. For me, what I learnt from relationships
is – more so whenever I was hurt or whenever I was
made a fool of or when people’d do the dirt on you
or anything – you can go out and punch someone,
you can go out and vandalise something, or you
can go off the rails, you can take drugs or you can
go drinking or whatever... but I found for me an
incredible way of getting those emotions out was
picking up the guitar and (roars) jamming it out.”
Danny admits that he still misses being around his
ex’s child.
“Those are the things that you live with every day.
That stuff just doesn’t go away. Because you open
yourself up to being a father. I find it very hard
because I see a lot of youths in Ireland who are able to
get into a relationship and then just completely close
it off after the relationship, almost in a heartless
way. But not me. It stays with me. It really does.”
Both Mark and Glen are fathers. Mark is happily
married with two kids, while Glen has a nine-year-
old son from a previous relationship.
Glen explains: “We were nine years together before
we broke up. That was rough. It was a really hard
time, but it’s amazing because, after that had ended,
this kicked in. My son lives in Dublin. Honestly, the
hardest thing for me in this whole thing is my little
lad because – before this kicked off – I was doing gigs
in Dublin and I was always there, around for him,
and I’d take him on weekends and stuff. But now I’m
not home as much, so the minute I get two days off
I’m like, ‘Send me to Dublin’, and I go and get him
straight away.
“It’s really hard. I miss him terribly. I ring my
son every day. He has a Skyphone and I talk to him
through Skype. When I call sometimes he’s like,
‘Dad, I really miss you. When are you coming back?’
And when I have to say, ‘It won’t be for another few
weeks’ – that’s the hardest part. I miss my family as
well, but you sign up for it. The sacrifice equals the
gain. This has been my dream since I was a kid and
now I’m finally getting to do it. You have moments
on tour when you miss home, your family and most
of all my little fella. But I love going on stage. It’s a
double-edged sword.”
Nine months ago, Danny started dating one of
Ireland’s top models, the Lithuanian-born Irma
Mali, who is also a single mother. Tragically, her
former partner Marius Simanaitis died as a result of
a single gunshot wound to the head on March 11 at
his apartment near the Phoenix Park, in mysterious
circumstances. According to a report in the Irish Mail
On Sunday, the gun had been fitted with a silencer and
“was found firmly clasped in his hand. He was in
the company of at least two other people and a large
quantity of drink had been taken.” According to the
same report, his family is convinced that he was, in
fact, murdered.
Bizarrely, when she returned home to Vilnius for
the funeral, Irma was door-stepped by a reporter from
an Irish tabloid. Danny is clearly irked by the insensi-
tivity of the journalist’s approach.
“If somebody wanted to do an interview with me
the day my father died I’d still be jumping on their
head right now,” he fumes. “My initial reaction is
to fly off the handle. If a journalist reports on the
truth, I’m absolutely fine with that if there’s a story
there, if there’s something that needs to come out.
I’m all about the truth. But invasion of privacy is
something that I find it hard to come to terms with.
The other side is, ‘You had to go for the story but did
you have go to the funeral? Did you have to go for the
interview at a very, very vulnerable time in a person’s
life?’
“She was upset from what she was going through
at the time, but she was even more upset because
in some way she felt this might harm my career!
She’s such a selfless girl. As far as modelling goes,
she’s done everything – been on the cover of every
magazine. But she’s the least likely person to see out
at a nightclub or at the opening of an envelope or
trying to get her picture somewhere. She’s just not
about that.”
Danny admits that he finds it difficult, talking
about his personal life.
“I was 16 when I lost my virginity,” he says. “I was
into football and then I found the performing arts.
I started hip hop dancing, which brought me a new
confidence. If you can handle yourself in a nightclub
the ladies then tend to look. That’s the whole point
of a nightclub. The girls get up and shake their
feathers and the guys get up and kind of flex a little
bit.
“But there’s no skeletons in the closet – it’s more
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