Westlife insist they are not bothered about credibility, with or without Brian. They have sold 32 million albums in five years, they remind Shane Hegarty.
I am interviewing Westlife, I tell people. Why, they ask, hardly bothering to look up from what they're doing. It's a good question. Why? Well, they represent nothing and everything about modern pop. They are the ultimate in manufactured pop. They have had 12 number one singles, but unless you are a true fan you would be hard pressed to remember any of them. There's that one that's mid-tempo and has a bit of a chorus. Or is that the other one, the kind of upbeat tune that goes into a sing-a-long. Ah, never mind.
Their live shows involve a bit of a dance routine - they've flown across stage, that kind of thing - but on television they only ever seem to do the same thing. They sit down on stools for two-thirds of the song. Then they stand up. That's pretty much it. They're not the Jackson Five.
Westlife get others animated, though. They really get under the skin of lots of people. Maybe you like them, maybe you don't think about them too much, or maybe you're one of those who really can't stand them; who takes their all-conquering blandness as a personal insult. Their new album is a Rat Pack tribute, Allow Us To Be Frank and if you have any fondness for Deano or Sammy or Ol' Blue Eyes then, frankly, you won't be pleased.
Recently, of course, Westlife lost a member of the band, but it's difficult to see the scar. Bryan left to become Brian, but it meant only one less stool. Take one of them away and it's hardly noticed. If another one was to go, then it might be seriously troublesome, but only because of dwindling numbers.
They've survived six years, with at least half of those spent answering questions on how much longer they're likely to go on. Things have run a bit lower on fuel in recent months, as the singles are increasingly likely to stall before the top spot, but they remain a finely-tuned marketing juggernaut that just keeps chugging away: Louis Walsh's finest creation of pop robots.
In fact, going to meet them you half expect them to be sitting on stools. You expect them to be wearing white suits. You expect their hair to be neatly disordered. You expect their smiles to leave you temporarily blinded. Then you are ushered into a Dublin hotel room to meet them and find yourself face-to-face with the poster boys of evil corporate pop. And they immediately disarm you.
You can go in all guns blazing, but they'll smile knowingly and calmly remove the weapon from your hand and sit you down. And before you know it, you're laughing along with them and wishing them all the luck in the world when you say your goodbyes. And when the hotel room door clicks shut behind you and you're standing alone again in the corridor, a coldness comes over you as it dawns on you that you've been mugged.
It's because they've heard it all before. There's nothing that will surprise them, rile them. They are not about to suddenly leave on a Maharishi trip; or to break from the management and decide that they want to be artists. A few years back, about the time he was fine-tuning Westlife, Walsh said that none of his bands would ever worry about credibility. Westlife answer this before you get to finish the question.
Nicky: "We don't."
Shane: "We don't care about credibility."
Nicky: "We don't worry about songwriting credibility, cos we're not John Lennons. We all write and Mark writes quite a lot. We all try, but I don't think any of us are gifted writers for the music that we do. We've been very adult and mature enough to always opt for the better option and that's the best we can do in our situation, though not everybody sees that. They say, lads, write your own music because you'll get credibility for it. People will open up and respect you more. But who will respect us more? Not the people who already buy our music because they're our fans and they respect us for what we do anyway. We're not trying to tap into someone who buys Oasis music, because they're never going to buy a Westlife album. It doesn't matter if we wrote a full album of number one hits, they don't like Westlife, they don't look at us as a cool band. That's fine, that's why they buy their music and we do our stuff."
So you don't mind that people can't stand what you represent? "Why do they care?" asks Kian, just a little animatedly. "That's what gets me. Why do they even care? They're not buying our music. Is it because it's cooler to care? I mean so what, get on with your life. To be honest with you, we don't care what them people say, we don't care what them people even care about us. The fact that they're even talking about us. Ash burned 1,000 Westlife CDs, thanks for the album sales lads. Get over it. Move on with your life. Sorry, but things aren't going to change. We're still going to be here whether you like it or not. Because there's a hell of a lot of people, 32 million in actual fact, who've bought our albums over the past five years and who do want us there."
"I think hating Westlife is an accessory," adds Mark. "I don't think that much about it, but it's just part of it, like having the shoes or whatever, it's part of their image."
But when Brian left the band he suddenly became bursting with hair and Nirvana T-shirts, like The Incredible Hunk of grunge. He got moody, serious, arty. Or at least, has tried his impression of those things. It suggested that maybe they wanted to live it up a little more than they're letting on.
Mark: "I don't think Brian has been fake for the past five years or so, saying that there's some rock star dying to get out. I do think that it's that he spent five years doing one thing and that he's going to be the complete opposite and rebel."
Kian: "It's a style rebellion or whatever."
Shane: "I think that with Brian, his style and his image still has marketing behind it. Just like Westlife - we dress slick, that's his image."
Kian: "I don't think it's a case of Brian coming out of Westlife and saying ...."
Shane: ".... I can't wait to grow a beard."
Watching McFadden, it occurs to you that there might be a frustrated rocker inside each of Westlife, dying to break from the constraints of being a glorified - if highly successful - kids' entertainer. They are young men in the music business, surely they are bursting to trash the instruments, leap into the audience? "I'd do a stage dive and end up breaking somebody's nose by mistake," laughs Kian.
You'd squash some 12-year-old girl.
Nicky interrupts. "But even the 12-year-old girl thing, I actually can't remember the last time I saw a 12-year-old girl at a Westlife concert. I think 12-year-old girls are now 18 who really liked us in the beginning and have grown with us. Aunties, sisters, mothers, they've got into us more. People have this stereotypical thing: boybands appeal to young girls who haven't reached puberty yet and they fancy the boys. And that's how it starts, but if you manage to stay around as long as we have ... I'm 26 and I pass by secondary schools - they know who Westlife are, but they're not that bothered, while six years ago they might have been."
Shane: "It's true actually. They're into McFly and Busted." He names these bands like a parent might talk about his son's musical tastes.
Nicky: "They're the new things. Six years ago they'd do a Smash Hits cover and they'd sell out.
Shane: "We haven't done a Smash Hits cover in three years." Nicky: "People wouldn't buy it now. Come to our concerts now and they're hen nights. They're 35-year-old women who want to flash their tits at us to get a bit of attention and we look down and have a laugh."
Kian: "And there's nothing wrong with that."
Do they really flash their tits at you?
"Of course, yeah," they roar as one.
But for all those perks, is it not frustrating to hand over every single aspect of your personality to a marketing machine? I've been watching their television appearances, and each time they perform, it seems that Mark's bow tie is closed while the others have theirs loosened. So, when I watch this, I'm marvelling at how they have got the image down to such details that even the tightness of the bow ties is considered. Not so, says Nicky.
"The bow tie thing was the whole Rat Pack look. But it is personal taste as well. For example, Mark might have been the one with his tie done, but had he wanted to have it undone he would have done it. It's not like there's someone standing there basically saying you're the one with the tie done. You're not and you're not. It's personal taste as well. And I think it develops over the years. When we started off yeah, we would have done almost anything because we didn't know any better and you have to do what you have to do. And you learn, like in any job. I'm not gonna do that, or I feel like I'm going to say this, so I'm going to say it. And that's when your personality starts to grow into it."
It would be harsh to say that Westlife and personality are two words that should not appear on the same page, but the monolithic image has probably saved them from the chop. There is no Scary Life or Sporty Life. They dress the same, finish each other's sentences, speak as a group.
For our photoshoot, they refuse to wear anything other than the suits, although for the interview they are in civvies, sporting jeans and hoodies (Mark's read "Phat Bastard"). Publicly, though, any deviation from the current marketing push was out of the question.
They even know to censor themselves. I wonder if there is anything they wished people would ask them about.
"No, because I guarantee we've been asked it. We probably do 10 to 15 interviews a day across four or five months a year. So it's very, very rare we get asked anything new," says Kian.
Shane: "We got asked one a few weeks ago..."
Kian: "Do you remember it?"
"No," admits Shane.
"No," echoes Kian, as if to prove his point.
Do they never want to be asked about the war in Iraq or anything like that? "It's not our place to talk about that stuff," says Kian. "Anyway, if we said the wrong thing, magazines and newspapers would make us look like a bunch of idiots. You know we're not high enough up the ladder to say these things."
They immediately flout their own advice and talk about the recent US presidential race. Kian wanted Kerry to win, and so did Nicky. Shane reckons Bush had "unfinished business" in Iraq. Mark, the shyest of them and the focus of some gentle ribbing, is clever enough to know when to keep quiet. "I just don't know enough about it to be honest," he says. "Of course I talk to my mates about these things, but I don't know enough about it to say."
They insist that the Rat Pack thing is not an attempt to move to a more mature audience, but because it was suggested to them and seemed like a good idea. They always do a medley of classic songs at their shows (they included Bohemian Rhapsody a couple of years back) and they've always had a big karaoke element about them anyway, so it seemed like a natural step. But Robbie Williams has already been down the Rat Pack road, and escaped by the skin of his teeth.
"You know what, Robbie Williams did ballads before us," says Kian. "So people didn't say we were doing similar things then. Yeah, he did do something similar. One thing we did notice was that he was very successful. Happy days."
On the sleeve notes, it says that they'd love to have been able to personally thank Joey, Frank, Dean and Sammy. Quite what the legends might have responded can only be guessed at, but people with a soft spot for the old crooners are unlikely to be pleased. Kian has a suggestion: "Don't buy it then. If you don't like Westlife, if you don't want to hear it, then don't buy it."
Nicky adds: "We were never trying to better it. It's not like we said, Frank Sinatra's the best voice and we can't do this because it won't be better than him. We're Westlife. We'll do a version of that song and people will listen to it and say, ok maybe it's not as good as the original but it's Westlife doing it and we're not out there trying to be better than the original."
If this album sells a few copies and the hen parties keep coming to the shows, then they won't go away. They admit that there's a bit of a grind to the relentless promotion and touring, but it has bought them some nice things and, besides, they have three months off next year.
"What we've done in the past six years is unbelievable," says Shane. "We never thought we'd get a quarter of it. But what we want is to keep doing it. We want more success. This album won't be the last album. The way we look at it is, if you're happy doing it and pleasing your fans ... if you make a bad album, you'll have a bad year or might be gone. But we try not to worry about it too much; we all try to do something that our fans will really enjoy. Our next goal is to get to 10 albums. We want to sell 64 million albums."