Boyband singer on losing his pop fortune, lying to his
bandmates about money and his devastating fall from grace off his pop
pedestal
What a Shane
Westlife crooner Shane Filan has opened up about his bankruptcy. The former boybander lead singer was declared bankrupt last year after losing a wallet-busting £18 million due to bad property investments.
He's
had to sell the house he designed in 2004, then worth a hefty
£3.5million and it's now being flogged for £825,000 and he says it's
broken his heart.
He told the Daily Mail: "I built it, I designed
it, I’d lived in it for nearly ten years. The children (Nicole, 8,
Patrick, 5, and Shane, 3) came home to it from the hospital after they
were born. There were a lot of memories. I had been very proud of it, so
that was like a knife through the heart. But it’s only bricks and
mortar, so you’ve just got to let it go."
Fortunately he's had his
childhood sweetheart and wife Gillian to stop him losing the plot. He
said: "She was amazing, just keeping me focused. Maybe I would have got
depressed without her, but she just kept me positive.
"She said:
'Look, you’ve got your voice and that’s our way forward to earn your
livelihood. We have the children. What if one of them was sick? Which
would you prefer, that or not having any money?'
"When your child
is looking up at you and you are putting them to bed at night and they
are just lying there, you have to remind yourself that’s what it’s all
about." Simply the West
He even had to get rid of his wedding ring as part of the
bankruptcy proceedings which was valued at £33,000, but he now has it
back.
"I didn’t want them to sell it. It’s not a nice thing to do
to buy your wedding ring twice. I’d rather not say how much I paid to
get it back. It’s personal between me and Gillian."
Shane admits he thought Westlife would bomb without former Mr Kerry Katona Brian McFadden when he left the group - but they only officially split up last year.
"When
I got into property, I had just had a baby, Nicole. I genuinely wanted
to invest in the future in case Westlife did fall apart, because no one
knew how we were going to last after Brian went. Everyone, including us,
thought maybe we had a couple of years."
But he got caught up in
the Irish property boom, easy loans and low interest rates. He admitted:
"People may think I was being greedy, but I’d have to disagree.
"My
attitude wasn’t: 'Right, let’s make loads of money and get the hell out
of here.' I was investing in a place I care about with projects I
thought would benefit people. Of course, if you make an investment you
want to make a profit. That’s just common sense. It’s not greed trying
to make a living, which is what I was trying to do.
"We had been
looking at a couple of nursing home sites because there was a shortage
of beds in the West of Ireland. We were encouraged by the council
planners who were loving the idea. Every adviser said we were going
after exactly the right stuff.
"In the beginning, it was all very
simple. A phone call to a bank, a quick meeting and you get two million
to buy a field. I put in half a million and would get the rest off the
banks. But then it would take years to get all the planning permission." In desperate need of a makeover
But then he was really stuffed after the credit crunch of
2007/8 when the banks weren't lending any more and wanted their money
back, by which time the value of the land had crashed.
"The couple
of years before I was declared bankrupt were the roughest. The bank
letters, the pressure, the stress was awful. You’re in this twilight
zone of not knowing where your life is going and yet you’re in Westlife.
Everything was great with the band. I was earning money and it looked
good."
And he didn't even tell his bandmates or band manager Louis
Walsh: "I didn’t want them to know. I am a private person. The lads
hadn’t a clue. They knew I had some property, but they didn’t know how
bad it was.
"And then they decided we were finishing as a band. I
went out of the room thinking: 'Oh my God, if they only knew. That was
probably the scariest time of my life. My job was finishing, my
financial security was ending and I knew I still had the bills coming in
every month.
"That’s when I realised I needed to get the lawyers
involved. It was a scary time, especially when your three little
children don’t know anything: they just think Daddy’s a superstar."
And
he still didn't cave in and tell the boys, even when they asked. He
said: "Nicky was saying: 'What’s happened to all the stuff you’re
building?' I said it was tough, it was a lot of pressure, but I still
didn’t say I was on my hands and knees.
"I thought I’d be able to fix it privately. I’d be able to sit down and make some sort of agreement, but it wasn’t to be."
When
he finally came clean they did their best to support him. "They said:
'You know we’re family.' I said yes, of course, I did. There was nothing
they could do, but I just wanted them to know. Skint star
"I was told the worst-case scenario was that I’d end up
bankrupt. I thought: 'Whoah, well that can’t happen. That’s never going
to happen. No way, not a chance. It can’t be that bad.’ But it was.
"When
you know the worst that can happen, it’s not as scary. But the thought
of all that getting out into the public domain made me anxious. What if
everyone finds out about all this mess, all the papers, everyone?
"How embarrassing would that be? I made this money and lost it all. What an idiot. You feel all of that."
He
says once he accepted his fate, it wasn't as bad as he thought: "I
never got depressed. I got anxious, I got nervous, I got scared. I
didn’t know what it was going to be like the next week or how bad it was
going to get. Was it going to get worse?
"I knew I was going to
lose my house in Ireland and all the other properties. It’s all gone.
But my house was the one material thing that was very important to me."
Shane is now hoping the solo career will bring in some cash but he doesn't want it to be like a Westlife megamix.
"I
was in tears a lot of times. I wrote about that in All You Need To
Know, probably my favourite song on my new album. There’s a line: 'It
takes a teardrop to set you free.'"
And the voice of reason in all this? It's none other than straight-talking Louis Walsh.
Shane said: "He told me: 'You’ve got no money, but you’ve got your voice. We’re going to fix this."
Just call him Louis'll Fix It.
