Westlife singer Mark Feehily has revealed how he ended up spending his holidays with Mariah Carey, Queen Latifah and Tulisa, while revealing how grueling his life in the boy band was.
While the Sligo star rarely meets the paparazzi, he ended up spinning water for over an hour in Barbados to avoid being photographed.
On Alan Carr’s Life’s A Beach podcast, the popstar revealed how the boy band don’t tend to be smitten with encounters with the world’s biggest celebrities.
When he bumped into Queen Latifah on the Greek island of Mykonos, he found himself in an impromptu song.
He said: ‘There’s a very famous little piano bar on the island run by this little old gay couple, and then they always bring in these American Broadway singers, they’re hilarious and fabulous and camp.
“I got to know the owners and they (would) always give us like a little seat in the corner.”
He remembers the owner asking him one evening if he would share the seat with Queen Latifah.
“She came with 12 people. They were like a bunch of classmates on vacation, really cool and we ended up chatting.
“Then everyone got up singing and we got up and sang with the fabulous Broadway singer.
“We spent a few hours with Queen Latifah and her friends. They were a big laugh.
‘She was so beautiful. She was like the sensible person. She was still letting her hair down, but of course she knew everyone was watching her.
“She felt like the real deal. She was really welcoming, a lot of people can be extremely distant.
He remembers another holiday when he had a chance encounter with X Factor judge Tulisa while celebrating New Years in Barbados with his partner, Caileean O’Neill.
‘Myself and Cailean returned from a party.
“We were seated in this lovely hotel and the balcony was right on the beach.
“All of a sudden I heard some sort of London accent. One of us poked his head around the corner and everything suddenly we were climbing from our balcony onto the balcony of Tulisa.
“We spent about three hours on her balcony drinking and laughing. She has an incredible Irish accent, one of those Irish accents that she could be Irish.
“She was just lovely, I had never met her before.”
On another occasion in Barbados, he revealed how he ended up jumping into the ocean from his paddleboard to avoid the paparazzi.
He said: “I was out there with Kian (Egan) and Jodi (Albert) and we were way out at sea on those paddle boards.
‘The next thing we saw this speedboat come and go and I realized there were paparazzi on it and I went into the water
“I just stayed underwater until I was 100% sure they were gone,” he laughed, “literally I stayed in the water for an hour and half.”
Although he later said in the podcast that he says he “never, ever gets his picture taken,” he remains on alert in case “this is the only time” his picture is taken without him. to know.
On the Life’s A Beach podcast, he also recalled spending a few days in Capri at Mariah Carey’s hilltop Italian estate when they were recording their duet, Against All Odds, early in the band’s career.
“We basically recorded the duet we did with her in the house she had at the time in Capri,” he said.
“When we landed, we all had dinner with Mariah Carey at this beautiful little Italian restaurant where everyone knew his Name.
“But no one was fidgeting, it was like she knew them all very well.
“The next day we went to his beautiful house on the edge of a cliff with a large recording studio.
“We spend half the time recording and composing backing vocals and the rest of the time having dinner.
“It was like she needed to talk to a bunch of regular people, like she was happy to get away from what I can imagine her life was in America.
‘Even though we were in awe of her and ‘it’s Mariah Carey’, there’s also a part of us that was never fazed by it all either.
“She’s very funny, there’s just a feeling that she really wants to keep normalcy amidst all the craziness.”
He also gave some insight into Westlife’s crazy schedule at the start of the group.
He told Alan Carr: “They used to put 18 calendar months in front of you on tons of A4 pages.”
“And it was your life dictated black and white on a page.
“They had things like hitting the gym at 8:30 a.m. Monday, hitting the gym at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, breakfast before…
“I don’t even know what I want for breakfast tomorrow and it’s been on my diary for six months.
‘And just the thought that your life is planned like that. There’s no spontaneity, I certainly didn’t shine as bright as some people.
“So now I’m really, maybe to a point stubborn, independent. This is where I am happy, master of my destiny.
