Ronan Keating will never forget the “anxiety” and “hurt” that was caused by the British tabloids after his Boyzone bandmate Stephen Gately was forced come out as gay.
The 48-year-old Irish musician, who will ring in 2026 with his BBC concert Ronan and Friends: A New Year’s Eve Party, reflected on the events that surrounded the infamous outing during an interview with Magic Radio earlier this year.
Around the time of the interview, the Sky documentary Boyzone: No Matter What had just been released, and it featured the impact and aftermath of Gately having to come out publicly.
In 1999 Gately, just 23-years-old at the time, came out as gay in The Sun newspaper, apparently revealing that he was “gay and in love”.
Initially, it appeared that the singer had come out as gay by his own accord, but it later transpired that a former member of his crew had threatened to sell a story about his sexuality to the press.
Stephen Gately’s coming out appeared on the front cover of The Sun, something which Keating remembers vividly to this day.
“When that newspaper came out, I remember seeing that when it was printed on the day and the anxiety, the energy that was in the room [with] the five of us,” Keating told Magic Radio, referring to his Boyzone bandmates Gately, Keith Duffy, Michael Graham, and Shane Lynch.
“We had flown back to Dublin just the day before so Stephen could tell his mum and dad that he was gay. They did that to him,” he added, lambasting the tabloids.
“The anxiety, the pressure, the hurt – all of that on that front page. I remember that paper coming out and waking up the next morning in Dublin and the papers and just being with Stephen and the mess that he was, and worried that the fans were going to turn their back on him and Boyzone, and that was the total opposite of what happened.
“They created all of that,” he added. “So when I saw that page again, it just brought everything back again.”
In Boyzone: No Matter What, Keith Duffy refers to the press invasion into Gately’s private life as “absolutely scandalous” and “damaging” for the young star. Conversely, Boyzone’s estranged manager Louis Walsh, who also appears in the documentary, gleefully celebrated that the story had made the front page.
Stephen Gately tragically died in Mallorca in 2009 due to pulmonary oedema – essentially fluid build up in the lungs. He was just 33.
