When Westlife’s Mark Feehily came out in the press, he cited his new boyfriend Kevin McDaid as one of his main motivations. Now, two years later, they’ve decided to talk openly about their relationship for the first time






On the other hand, the sweet tale of Mark Feehily and Kevin McDaid is just the story of two young men in love. On quite the other it is both an apocryphal story for the state of British pop music and a right hook to the celebrity age of relationship sales. Despite the requests, they haven’t laundered their three-year love through the gossip weeklies for cold, hard cash. They have invited nobody but their friends into their ‘lovely new home’. They sometimes go to launches and premieres together, but they don’t make a song and dance out of it

Mark Feehily you will know of. Mark is a quarter of the most successful British pop act of their age, Westlife. Critically they have few garlands to spare but for Westlife, a boyband that has always dealt in simple emotion, simple suits, rousing choruses and that inevitable middle 8 key change when they used to rise from their bar-stools, the path to righteousness is above criticism. They connect at a direct level with great swathes of the British public and phenomenal amounts of success is the sweet revenge against any snippiness directed at their winning, slightly bygone age formula of singing lovely songs harmoniously well and putting on the kind of entertainment that was once called ‘family’

Entirely democratic and rammed to the rafters with cheery Irish bonhomie, there’s a stag night element to Westlife as a foursome. They have never indulged in the traditional homo-eroticism of the well-trodden boyband model. They don’t do topless calendars. There is a rugby anthem element to their best songs. They are the boys that mothers would like their daughters to bring home as prospective sons-in-law. They are the least pretentious people in the entire world. All of which served to make Mark Feehily a deep curiosity when he eventually came out two years ago, to little fanfare, in The Sun newspaper.
“People forget that I was in Westlife at 18 years old,’ he says now, of his own awakenings, ‘and had to go through the process of coming to terms with my sexuality over time in the public eye. Being stubborn I was very adamant that I would do it in my own time and at my own pace. I think that’s very important. If anybody tried to push any buttons or suggest anything to me then I’d just fucking retreat.”





Mark is ‘the sensible one’ in the Kevin and Mark show. That’s sensible as in level-headed, as opposed to boring.

“People should be neither pushed into (coming out) or held back. You need to be able to do these things for yourself. People always ask me what advice I’d give to X up and coming pop star who’s gay. There’s no advice I can give to anybody apart from to do it their own way and how it feels right for them. I could tell them 50 things I’d been through but their experience will be there own and it’s all totally unique. We all come from somewhere different and we’re all going somewhere different. The only thing I will say, and I think Kevin will back me up on this, is that it changed my life so much for the better in every conceivable way coming out to everyone around me.”


Kevin McDaid you may be less aware of. Kevin was one fifth of the ill-fated boyband V. His pop tale is almost the exact antithesis of Mark’s. After the two years hard graft and off-the-scale finances it costs to launch a new pop act, V were unceremoniously dropped by their record label when their debut album failed to ignite anywhere beyond its number ‘80something’ debut. When Kevin met Mark in January 2005, V were coming to the end of their short road. All those personal investments, promises of stardom and breakfast television opportunities were about to disappear in a puff of pop smoke.
It’s testament to the strength of their own relationship that Mark and Kevin seem operational at a high level because of and not in spite of their wildly oppositional experiences at the sometimes merciless hands of showbusiness. Kevin is absolutely delighted for Mark at the successful level Westlife operate at and Mark is quick to defend the talents of his boyfriend’s old band and implicitly seems to understand that success for a British pop act can turn on a sixpence. There is not so much a note of ‘there but for the grace of god’ about Mark when he talks of Kevin’s finger-burning experiences with the pop market, but there is a distinct level of gratitude for the incredible opportunities he’s been afforded due to his own group’s commercial appeal.


In many way’s Kevin is the starrier of the twosome. He looks more traditionally popstar and has a voluble energy level that lends itself to centre stage. He is ‘the impulsive one’

in the Mark and Kevin show. As a duo they are astonishingly un-cynical, totally infectious company and wear their love very well. Mark and Kevin met at a party for Childline in Dublin. They have recently given up smoking together.




Which one of you decided to give up smoking?
Mark: We’d been putting getting healthy on the backburner for a long time. Not that we were going nuts or anything.
How old are you both?
Kevin: I’m 23 and Mark’s 27. We basically got very lazy in the summer, in Ireland, no-one around, just us…
Mark: Watching the TV and playing Playstation.
Kevin: Late Nights, Late mornings....
Mark: Friends we hadn't seen for ages
Kevin: It was just bad. We both smoked in that way that as soon as one of us had put one out the other would light one up. We’d literally get to the stage where we’d have one in the car, get out to go to the shop, have one when you came out of the shop and then light up again in the car.
Mark: It got to the point of stupidity. But I’ve smoked a long time. We were smoking before we met each other and it literally got to the point where we were just disgusted with it. There was always an excuse and Kevin just hammered on to me about it, are you a man or are you a mouse? So I thought ‘let’s just do it.’ I just thought I can do it without these sticks of crap.


How long have you been together for?
Mark: At the end of January it’ll be three years.

Well Done
Mark: It’s been very natural. You ask how long and I have to think about it because it definitely doesn’t feel that long. We’re quite laidback in that sense. We’re not the counting the days types.
Do you know the exact date?
Mark: Yep, 28th of January, 2005.
Kevin: I was in my band at the time, V,and we were both doing a charity concert for Childline that happens every year in Dublin.
Mark: It’s a good old Irish party.
Kevin: And we both got boozed up and basically just met. We had a nice conversation and it just went from there really.


Who else was playing there?
Mark: It’s one of those gigs where all the pop people go to so it was Girls Aloud, McFly, the usual.
Kevin: That was when pop was alive. It was a great party.


What’s the camaraderie like between all the bands?
Kevin: We were speaking about this afterwards and people do tend to keep themselves to themselves. It’s not because people are being rude, they do want to have conversations with other people who have that thing in common but…
Mark: It can be a bit silly. Two people will be walking towards each other in the corridor and you get that thing where you don’t know whether to say hello or they might think they’re too cool or whatever. There can be a weird – neither act wants it but there can be tension. I always used to look at the music industry and think that everyone got on backstage and it must be so much fun and then you’re walking down a corridor and people have their heads down.
Kevin: We were with the same management company as Busted and McFly and we lived in the same complex as Girls Aloud so we all kind of knew each other.


My god, you had Sarah Harding in your complex? That sounds quite full on.
Kevin: It was quite a few years ago. We were all a lot younger
Did you swap numbers the first night?
Both: yeah we did Kevin: I can’t remember who asked, can you?
Mark: I think we just said ‘we should swap numbers, shouldn’t we?’ I actually can’t remember either because both of us were extremely drunk.
Kevin: You texted me first.
Mark: Did I?
Kevin: Yeah. Then I started texting. I was texting him taking the piss. Westlife were rehearsing for a tour and one of the costumes was like workmen.
Mark: The Kwik Fit Fitters.
Kevin: So I was asking him if he was wearing his jumpsuit.
Mark: He was taking the piss out of me for my dodgy outfit but he’d dressed up as an ice cream man for one of his performances. I quite like the Kwik Fit Fitter outfit, actually.
Kevin: What secured it was our love for our divas. Mark has his diva, Mariah Carey and I have mine, Christina Aguilera. (laughing) He was the first person that understood how I felt.


Are you obsessed with Mariah Mark?
M: I wouldn’t say obsessed. As a young person I wanted her to be my big sister. I didn’t have a sister and she was the epitome of beauty for me. She always looked so sad when she was singing and then you learn the story of how she’s like the princess locked away in the mansion and… the voice? She seemed to totally understand gospel music, which I love so much. I saw her performing when I was about ten. She was performing live on some American TV show and my dad called me down ‘come here, Mark, look at this one, you’ll like her’ and I literally just stood and froze for a while at her performance of Without You. She is amazing.

Tell me about your love for Christina, Kevin.
K: I loved Genie In A Bottle and Come On Over just as songs. But with Dirrty it just went somewhere else. By Beautiful I just knew she was doing something really special. I bought the album on mini-disc and listened to it non-stop. I love someone who sings about their trials in life. I could relate.

What did it feel like to work with Mariah, Mark?
K: I would wet myself.
M: I imagined her to have this huge, imaginary, fabulous, lavish lifestyle. There was a time when I was in Thailand with Westlife. I’d always ask the porters when we were away who’d stayed at the hotel and I asked this guy and he said Mariah Carey and it seemed impossible to me. I had this silly illusion that she was so far removed from reality she couldn’t possibly have stayed in that hotel. Luckily by the time I got to meet her I’d come to terms a bit more with what celebrity was and what being a fan of somebody was because we had our own fans. The really annoying thing was that the first time I met her Westlife had just been nominated for an MTV award and we had a press conference day. I didn’t even know she was going to be there until I got there.
K: Tell him about the phone call. That must’ve been the maddest point…
M: … I’ll get to that in a minute. They put me in front of an entire press conference to meet her. And I’d waited ten years for this. For fuck’s sake, they couldn’t have made me look like more of a twat and she was in full bloom on a chaise longue.
K: With a fan, blowing her.
M: I just said ‘Hi Mariah, it’s really nice to meet you’ and she said ‘I heard you’re a big fan of mine.’ I’d got over meeting her when we worked with her.

Did you actually work in the studio together?
M: Absolutely. It wasn’t phoned in. We worked out the BV’s together. She did the main vocal in New York but we did BV’s and additional stuff together. It was in her house in Capri.

You did the famous video where Bryan McFadden’s starring at her breasts for the entire song at the same time?
M: Yeah. The maddest thing was when I was sitting in my living room in my house in Galway – the same living room my dad had called me down to see her in all those years earlier – and the phone rung and my mum said ‘Mark! It’s Mariah Carey on the phone.’ Fuck me. It was before we performed Hero with her in Manchester and she was calling to go through what we were going to do with the BV’s. I was just thinking all the way through the conversation ‘fucking hell, I wish I was taking this phone call on my computer so I could record it.’ Mariah singing down the phone to me in my mum’s living room. I put the phone down and didn’t remember one fucking thing that she said. For me, things like that are the things that make this job the best one in the world.
K: Those things don’t happen very often and no-one can take them away because they’re special to you.
M: And I’ll say this as well, we’ve worked with a lot of people who are not nearly as big as her who’ve been very difficult to get stuff out of.
K: She always asks after Mark.

Have you ever met Christina?
K: No. And I don’t think I’d cope nearly as well as he did if I did.

Is this both of your first long-term relationship?
M: Kevin’s my first boyfriend.
K: I’d not had anything serious. Nothing like this.
M: Not that anything could come close to this, eh? [laughing]
K: Of course not.

When you first met did you know that each other was gay?
M: You couldn’t have known, could you?
K: I never knew. But I was suspected.
M: Oh, I’m sure you were all gossiping about me. It wasn’t public then. It wasn’t even known for a fact in the industry. I trusted him from the moment I met him though. Some people you just make a connection with. I didn’t know for a fact that Kevin was gay but when I seen him dancing with Girls Aloud on the dancefloor at that party I thought ‘hmmm, he might be.’
K: [laughing] Fuck off! Sarah wasn’t there at the party so I said to Cheryl ‘I’ll be Sarah tonight’. We did the whole lot of Wake Me Up.

Are you still friendly with them?
K: We see each other around but we’re not really in the same circles.
M: I was quite matey with Nadine. We had the Irish connection. We’re still really good friends when we see one another. But we don’t really cross paths.
K: We saw them all at Nicola’s birthday party.
M: Nicola is a really, really nice girl. She looks fabulous, as well.

Where did you first go on holiday together?
M: We went in dribs and drabs to America a bit and had the most amazing experiences. That was the first time we had proper time together and after that summer stories started appearing in the papers. Then the whole coming out thing happened.

Where you worried about it?
M: No I wasn’t. I’ve always said this but meeting Kevin was the thing that made me go ‘do you know what? I don’t give a fuck anymore.’ Meeting him was the final thing for me to think the whole fucking world can know my business if it wants to. I’m not creeping around because I’m not that sort of a person.

When did you tell the rest of the band that you’d met Kevin?
M: Oh, straight away. The night I met him I said ‘I’ve met this really cool guy.’

Were all the other boys in relationships?
M: Yep. Shane and Nicky were married, Kian was with Jodi.

What about you Kevin, who did you tell first?
K: Aaron, who I was in the band with. We have a really strange relationship. We used to hate each other in the early days of the band. I was openly gay and had no issues with it whatsoever. And Aaron was really struggling with his sexuality. Because I was so open about it it freaked him out a bit, which it would, you know? I remember when I was at college and there was one guy called Danny who was a total queen and I was shit scared of him because I thought that he’d out me. Me and Aaron ended up as best friends, though.
M: Aaron’s a really nice guy.

Did you have a flat in London at the time, Mark?
M: No, I was in hotel land. I was on the verge of buying and I had intended to look for a place. I had a place in Ireland but now I’ve got one in both.

Did you pick the London place together?
K: Yeah, we rented for a little bit and then started looking. We chose it together and decorated it together.
M: We’re still fucking decorating it together.

Any decorating arguments you’d care to share with the more domesticated aspect of the relationship?
K: God, we’re both really stubborn. He’s more stubborn than me.
M: Whatever.
K: You are! It took us two years t decide on a sofa. We’ll see something that we both love and then a year later we’ll get round to buying it. I’m like ‘why has it taken us ten times to see something that we know we want?’

But you got it eventually?
M: Yeah, it was so expensive. In fact, it’s so expensive that I’m afraid to sit on it.

Oh my god, you’re like one of those suburban mums that keeps plastic on?
M: Get away with you. No, the dog’s been at it already. When the dog starts scratching it I’m like ‘oh there goes another grand’.
K: But it’s fabulous.
M: Yeah, but we didn’t spend that much money on a fucking sofa for the dog to wreck it. We should’ve gone to Ikea.

When did you get the dog?
K: Last Christmas. I went to Harrods to buy a Christmas tree. I’d been talking about getting a dog for ever with Mark and he’d always say oh it’s not possible because of how much we travel. But then Kian and Jodi got a dog and I saw how able they were to cope with it. Me and Jodi had been to Harrods the week before because he’d heard that they had some pugs in the pet shop there. Mark thinks that it was a plan but it wasn’t.

Who picked the name?
K: She’s called Saffron Cleopatra.
M: Saffy. After Saffy in Ab Fab. We nearly called her Sacha but I thought it was too butch.
K: She slept on our bed last night, which doesn’t happen very often.
M: Cleopatra was her name in Harrods.

She’s not named after the band, then?
K: No. But she’s totally comin’ atcha. Honestly, I could talk about her for the next hour. She goes everywhere with us.
M: I know we’re bound to say this but I really genuinely believe she’s the best pug in the world.
K: Here let me show you a picture [entire mobile phone slide show ensues and, yes, Saffy is absolutely adorable].
M: It’s good to have a female presence around the house as well. And as small as she is, she makes her presence felt.

Given the sofa and the Saffy situations it’s not difficult to deduce that Mark’s the sensible one in your relationship?
K: Absolutely. Mark thinks of the negative things which is good. I’m just all positive, totally ‘let’s just do it’.
M: To be honest, if it wasn’t for Kevin I’d be the one thinking up the positive stuff, but because Kevin only thinks of the positive stuff we need to think the other way sometimes.
K: I am very impulsive.

How did it feel when V finished, Kevin?
K: It was really, really hard.
M: I felt it too, because it wasn’t long after we’d met.
K: What was hard was that V were a fucking great boyband and I think we could have been credible enough to do something. I’m not stupid. I know what pop is and I’m happy to be part of that but I could slowly start seeing these wrong decisions being made. We didn’t end it. The label didn’t want to pursue us and that would have tarnished us trying to stay together. It took me a couple of years to get over it. I really find it hard to talk about.
M: The thing is this job is the furthest thing imaginable away from a bar job or something like that. You can’t switch off and put it behind you at the end of your shift.
K: It’s not a job basically.
M: It’s a lifestyle.
K: There were a lot of people telling us at the start that we were going to be huge and it’s hard, even though the management have told you not to, to not buy into the hype. I got a bit bitter and jaded by the music industry. For pop music it was like an ending. I started seeing all the magazines closing down and the TV shows being axed and there was nowhere for pop music to live anymore.
M: I think when CD:UK went that was the last nail in the coffin. The thing about V is, and I can say this from not being directly involved with them, that people outside of the band messed things up. I’ve heard the other 100 or so songs that didn’t make the album and they’re fucking amazing.

I like Hip To Hip.
K: Hmmm. Now, I see a boyband on X Factor and instantly think ‘nah!’ I think it’s going to be a while before one breaks again. I think it’s a couple of years off but when it happens it’ll be fantastic.
M: I think everyone should start a campaign to get V back together.
K: There’s a couple of people hanging around the internet doing it.

Did your album ever come out?
K: It did. It made it to the dizzy heights of 80-odd I think.

Were you put together from auditions?
K: yeah, all our paths had crossed at some point before the band were put together.

Did you have nerves about living in Ireland as well as London, Kevin?
K: Yeah. We spend the summer there, but all Mark’s friends and family have been sooo lovely to me. I was nervous about meeting them all but within 30 seconds we’d bonded. It’s so different from London.
M: It’s the same for me. But we’re similar like this. We both come from very strong family backgrounds.
K: Being in my family can be like being in an episode of Shameless sometimes. In a really nice way.

Where you nervous about telling your mum about meeting Kevin?
M: No, not at all.
K: I was so nervous about meeting her.
M: Likewise, I was really nervous about meeting yours. We both held those meetings in very high esteem. It was a big deal for both of us.
K: His mum makes the best, best, best vegetable soup.
M: And yours makes an amazing lasagna.

Do they know one another?
M: Yep, everyone’s met in Ireland. My parents have yet to go to Newcastle but that’ll happen.

It’s quite unusual for the parents to get involved with gay couples.
M: I think it’s a different day and age now. The differences between a gay couple and straight couple, though not in everyone’s case obviously, isn’t so much now.
K: We’re just a couple. We’re not ‘a gay couple’.

Brilliant.
M: It feels right to hear that. We’re just two normal lads in a relationship and we happen to be two guys rather than a guy and a girl. There’s no difference between me and Kevin that there is between…

Kian and Jodi?
M: Exactly. Within Westlife, at home, within our families, everywhere we don’t get special treatment because of it. Times are very different now.

Give yourself and your family some credit here, I think this is down to how individual couples wear their relationships and if they wear them without any shame they won’t be treated shamefully.
M: Where I grew up is a far cry from New York City or London but I have to give the place full credit. I swear to god, I haven’t had one look or comment made to me in Sligo. It’s not like London is more tolerant or advanced. In my personal experience I haven’t experienced negativity in either.

How long ago did you come out to your parents?
M: I’m trying to think when it came out in The Sun. Two years ago since August. I told my parents about three, four years before that.

Did coming out take complications out of your life?
M: I’m quite an honest, straightforward person. I’m not sneaky and I think anyone’s sexuality is a big part of them. To not be able to be free and open about it felt very unnatural.

Do you have brothers and sisters?
M: I’ve two younger brothers. No sisters.

Apart from Mariah Carey?
M: She’s my soul sista.

What about you Kevin?
K: I’ve an older brother and a younger sister.

How do you get on with them?
K: Great. My sister’s just been down to stay with us for the weekend and my brother lives in Thailand.

Do they like Mark?
K: Yeah they do. Paul’s only met Mark once but he really liked him. There’s more to come here. We’re both getting way more comfortable being around each other’s families.

Do you see this as being forever?
Both: Absolutely.
M: I don’t want to grow old, particularly, but I want to do it with Kevin.

What do you think you’ll be like as old men?
K: Grumpy.
M: We’ll be sitting there bickering all day long. I won’t be able to get up out of my chair and I’m going to have to rely on people wheeling me around.
K: You know those old couples walking down the street together or in a restaurant, pulling out a chair for his partner? I want to be like that.





Have you talked about civil partnership?
M: I get asked this at every interview. Is it true you’re going to get married, when are you getting married? I was going to say this was a gay thing but I’m wrong in that because Kian gets it in every interview, too. At the start I used to think it was a topical issue because of civil partnership, which I think by the way sounds like a fucking operation or something. It sounds like a lung transplant. ‘I’m going in tomorrow to have a civil partnership.’ It’s a marriage, you know?
K: I think we’ll look into it in the future. At some point in our relationship we’re going to want to basically celebrate being together. And it is a good excuse for a good old shindig isn’t it?
M: First of all, I am the type of person that would be telling everyone if it was happening.

Have either of you ever been to one?
M: Kevin has.
K: I went to a friend of mine’s in Newcastle in the summer. It was unusual.
M: It’s a new thing whatever way you look at it. But it’s fantastic, you know? It couldn’t have come any sooner.

What music do you listen to in the flat?
K: I like musicals. A bit of Rent or Wicked.
M: I love my soul music. I’ve always loved pop and Kevin does have a massive collection of it but because Westlife satisfies that for me I look to fulfil the other bits of my love for music. I love women with amazing voices, Jill Scott. Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Angie Stone. Louis [Walsh] tells me that we might be getting to do a duet with her at some point, which would be major.

Didn’t Blue get her for something?
M: I’ll tell you a funny story about that. Stevie Wonder actually asked me and Bryan [McFadden] to sing with him when we met him in a nightclub in LA once. He gave me his telephone number. Stevie fucking Wonder. Me and Bryan were pissed out of our minds on these shots we’d just been taking out of test-tubes so I took the wrong fucking number down. We were talking about it the next day, like did that really fucking happen? I said ‘oh he was probably just being nice’ and the next thing fucking two months later along comes Blue with Stevie Wonder. He told me that night that he’d been looking for a male group to do a duet with. I don’t think I remember any single night of that entire trip to LA. I was pissed for the entire time. But it was great to meet him anyway. That’s the stuff that I progressed to after finding Mariah Carey when I was ten. Vocally she has a side to her that people don’t credit her with. She can really sing. I love big voices.
K: I’ve got Robyn on in the car at the minute. That’s a great album.

Do you like the same TV?
K: No. I like total trash. I loved Janice Dickinson on I’m A Celebrity… Just brilliant.
M: There’s certain elements of trashy TV that I’ve come to like through Kevin. I love America’s Next Top Model.
K: And you like the E! True Hollywood Stories.
M: I love the ludicrousness of it all.

Are you both watching X Factor?
M: Look, I couldn’t have more connection with X Factor if I tried. Both my bosses are on it. Louis and Simon.

Tell me something I don’t know about Simon Cowell and please make it ‘he’s gay’.
M: [laughing] I’ll tell you something. He’s got the littlest fit in the universe. I don’t know what size they are but they look like they’re about size 5. Of course I have major, major amounts of respect for Simon and he’s been an amazing guide of our career. Actually, I haven’t looked at his feet for a while.

Do you like Westlife, Kevin?
K: Yes I do. When they first came out I loved them, but as time went on and I grew up my taste changed. But recently I like them a lot again. I like this album loads.

What’s your favourite Westlife song?
K: Probably one from the first album. Swear It Again or Flying Without Wings. I used to sing it at auditions, which is quite funny when you think about it now.

What’s your favourite V song, Mark?
M: That the public would know? Probably You Stood Up. It’s just a classic pop song. Breakaway was a great song on the album.

Do you sing for pleasure?
M: Oh yeah, I’ll be singing for the rest of my life even if it’s not my career. I didn’t get into Westlife because I dreamt of being a pop star or being famous. I never aspired to being the thing I ended up as. I enjoy it and I embrace it but I never aspired to be it. I aspired to being a singer. I’d be happy as a backing singer. I just took an opportunity that came my way. It has gone phenomenally well but if none of that had happened then it would’ve been fine.

Did you always dream of having a big relationship?
M: I think I’m a prime example of how doing your best to deal with your sexuality, if you’re struggling at all with the unknowns of it, then there’s nothing to really be afraid of out there. Your life is out there.

How soon did you fall in love with one another? And how do you know what love is?
K: Obviously it was quite fast. I can’t think of the exact date or time and I can’t say that I do know 100% what love is but it just feels right and I know I’d do anything for Mark.
M: There’s so many things attached to the idea of being in love. But I think you know when you love someone when it feels right, inside, to tell them it. We always tell each other we love each other but we’re quite laid back and natural about it. I don’t analyse it, I just live it. All I know is that I’m happy when I go to sleep at night with Kevin and I’m happy when I wake up in the morning.
K: And likewise, of course.




Another Westlife wedding?

Thursday June 26 2008


Westlife star Mark Feehily (28) has signalled he will eventually tie the knot with his long-term boyfriend Kevin McDaid.

And given that after this week, he'll be enjoying a 12-month-long holiday from the music industry, the singer plans to devote more of his time to Kevin.

"I get asked about this all the time and I'm sure I will eventually get married," he told the Herald. "The fact is, I'm as happy as Larry with Kevin. Thing's are going fantastically well between us. We're together now more than three years and the relationship is brilliant.




"I have been talking about the issue a lot in our new Westlife book and I said a bit out about the whole 'coming out' issue and I meant it when I said it was the best thing I ever did."

He added how it's not something he thinks about "right now" but could see it happening in the future.

However, Mark may have to wait a few years yet before getting married in Ireland.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern ruled out a referendum on gay marriage in the lifetime of the current government.

Speaking on Newstalk today, Mr Ahern said he "couldn't go any further" in providing equal rights for gay people in Ireland.




"The government has gone as far as is legally and constitutionally possible. If we were to go any further we would have to put a referendum to the people, but I couldn't see it happening in the lifetime of this government," Mr Ahern said.

honest

Mark first met fellow performer Kevin, a former member of boyband V, at the Childline concert in Dublin in January 2005 and just a few months later, came out of the closet.

Since then, he said he has received nothing but messages of support from fans around the world, who have commended him for his honesty.

One of the strongest couples on the showbiz scene, the pair have been inseparable since meeting more than three years ago and friends say they are definitely in it for the long haul.

And given that Mark and the rest of the band are taking a year-long break from music, he has ample time to devote to his personal life.

"Technically, it's a year off but it's more that we're not releasing an album this year. We have done nine albums in nine years and it does take its toll. We wanted to get away from it all. We want to be able to go home, scratch our ar**s and do nothing," he explained.

"I want to be around for my dad's birthday and my friend's wedding and all the thing's that I've missed throughout the years, the things that you bite your lip for and say you don't mind missing."

plans

He continued: "You do have to make sacrifices if you want to be a success but we feel it's a good time to take a year off. Me and Kian are going to travel while Shane and Nicky have kids so they want to be home to wake up in the morning and be there for them."

The Irish band will finish their sell-out tour of UK and Ireland by performing at the Liverpool Pops event this Sunday -- which will mark their last performance for a year.

But Mark admitted that it was "unfortunate" that the weather affected their performance in Galway last Saturday, after scores of fans were forced to leave Pearse Stadium early due to the torrential rainfall.

"I heard someone say that three weeks worth of rain fell in about two hours on the evening but what can you do? You just have to get on with it. Before the show, I thought the whole thing might be cancelled but in the end, they went along with it and the decision was taken out of our hands," he explained. "By the end of the night, 70 or 75pc of the crowd were still there and that was good to see."




COLLECTING THEIR FRENCH BULLDOG PUPPY (AUGUST 2009)






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Hi guys,ITS TRUE!!! Myself & Kevin are engaged!! We are so happy!




FASHION KICKS IN MANCHESTER 2010