PROLOGUE

      ‘So, Westlife, what do you think of Brazil?’ We were sitting on the top of a shaking tour bus, being interviewed by a well-known DJ in Rio de Janeiro, live on radio.

      Around the tour bus were 3,000 Westlife fans, all screaming and chanting.

      Back home, we’d already seen our first seven singles go straight in at number 1, a feat no band before us had ever achieved. We’d sold millions of albums around the world and gone from being unknowns in an aspiring boy band from Ireland to the front of every pop magazine in the world in just over a year.

      Westlife was a phenomenon, without a doubt.

      We’d been due at that Rio radio station, but there’d been so many fans waiting for us outside that we were unable to get anywhere near and our personal safety would have been at risk – had we tried to get off the bus we’d have been pulled apart.

      As we’d pulled around the corner, the screaming crowd had surrounded the vehicle in a heartbeat and started banging on the sides, rocking the bus, chanting and screaming. It was mental. Several of us actually pushed our backs and shoulders up against the glass because we thought the windows were going to cave in.

      We were loving it.

      We got our cameras and handycams out and were filming the fans as they were filming us. It was great.

      The security men made us climb up through one of the bus sky-lights onto the roof and do the interview there.

      There seemed only one thing we could say in reply to the DJ’s question: ‘We love Brazil!’

      The screaming was so loud we thought our eardrums were going to burst.

      It is a long way home to the gentle pace of rural Ireland, Sligo and suburban Dublin from Rio de Janeiro, but the journey to the roof of that bus – and beyond – would see a lot more twists and turns than any of us could ever have imagined.

      Here’s how we did it.

Part I

       CHAPTER ONE TOWN OF PLENTY

      For 35 years, my parents, Mae and Peter Filan, ran the Carlton café right in the middle of Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland. The whole family – all nine of us – lived in the house above it. We loved living there.

      I was born on 5 July

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