It's raining former Irish boy band types.

[sonofhal]

Stephen Gately from Boyzone found dead in Majorca.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-on-stage.html

[whynotsmile99]

RIP

[MissingPerson]

MY FIRST LOVE!

Oh Steve.

[bleep]

*gasp*

[MarkO]

Very strange. I'm sure the tox report will tell a tale.

[MissingPerson]

Sigh.

Once - long long ago - there was another time. A time before I was the easygoing sentinel of discerning taste you know now.

Once, I was a girl who'd just turned ten and had been given £20 to spend. I spent £12.99 of it on my first ever album, and that album was Boyzone's Said & Done.



It came on double cassette. My favourite song was Arms of Mary, the fourth or fifth song on the second tape. I loved Boyzone, and I played the hell out of those two cassettes on my tapedeck. I recorded copies for my friends. For we were, all of us, hysterical Boyzone fans.

Back in the day, of course, you were either a Ronan girl or you were a Steve girl, and by God and all, I was a Steve girl. I had a picture of him on my homework notebook: I'd put sellotape on over it, to protect it and stop it getting damaged in my schoolbag. Steve didn't have Ronan's ego, or Shane's badboy swagger. Steve was quiet, a little bit geeky, and sweet, and I was madly in love with him. I was madly in love with him so of course he was gay, but we didn't know it then and hardly would have cared.

There are plenty of bands better than Boyzone, there are plenty of boybands better than Boyzone, but none of them had Steve, so they can fuck off.

You can have yer Patrick Swayzes and yer David Carradines. For me, this is the most real of all this year's celebrity deaths, and I was sincerely sorry to hear it was true.

[bleep]

yes, even though i myself fancied ronan for inexplicable reasons, steve always seemed the sweetest of the lot. he was adorable in that "hot for teacher" music video.

[rskapcat]

So he was the Irish boyband equivalent of Jonathan from NKOTB? I would be heartbroken if he died, so I understand your pain, MP.

[MissingPerson]

There was a nice piece about him on the Guardian online news.

Tributes from the world of pop music and beyond have poured in for the Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, who died in Majorca yesterday.

Gately, who was 33, died at his holiday home in Port Andratx, where he was staying with his civil partner, Andrew Cowles. Spanish police said there were "no signs of suspicious circumstances".

Gately joined Boyzone in 1993 after answering an advert in Dublin to audition for Ireland's first boyband. The band were hugely successful, enjoying six number-one singles before they split up in 2000.

Gately, who shared lead vocals with Ronan Keating, came out as gay 10 years ago, shocking the band's legion of adoring female fans but retaining their support.

The Boyzone tour website said that members of the band were flying out to Spain following the news. The band – Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch – said in a statement: "We are completely devastated by the loss of our friend and brother, Stephen.

"We have shared such wonderful times together over the years and were all looking forward to sharing many more.

"Stephen was a beautiful person in both body and spirit. He lit up our lives and those of the many friends he had all over the world.

"Our love and sympathy go out to Andrew and Stephen's family. We love you and will miss you forever, 'Steo'."

The band's manager, Louis Walsh, cancelled his scheduled appearance as a judge on the live X Factor show tonight . Walsh, who had been with Gately at an awards ceremony last Monday, said he was "in complete shock". "We will rally around each other this week," he told the News of the World. "He was a great man."

Sir Elton John was among the pop music legends who expressed sadness at the death of Gately. "Stephen was the kindest, gentlest soul," he said. "We send our love and condolences to his partner, Andy, and to all his friends everywhere."

The veteran broadcaster and music historian Paul Gambaccini said: "This wasn't supposed to happen. This was not in the script."

Gately was born in Dublin. Before joining Boyzone he had worked as a barman and shopping assistant and landed a small part in the cult film The Commitments. By the time he came out in 1999, the band had already enjoyed 13 consecutive top five singles. He made the announcement to fans after discovering that someone was planning to sell a story revealing his sexuality to a newspaper.

Despite the band's pin-up status, he received an overwhelmingly positive response from fans who flooded the band's website with messages of support. In 2006, Gately married Cowles in a civil union.

After Boyzone split, Gately embarked on a solo career. He had three top 20 singles but was dropped by his label, Polydor, in 2001.

He went on to have success on the theatre circuit, including taking the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and playing the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Lloyd Webber described Gately as "enormously talented" today.

Boyzone aren't going to go down in history as musical innovators or anything, but they're very closely tied to a lot of fond memories of mine. The guy was very young. The circumstances certainly remain to be seen, but either way, a sad shame.

[HunterGather]

thats sad.

Slightly off topic-Ronan Keating had some good songs from his solo career (also from this group)

[gaypalmsprings]

"In 2006, Gately married Cowles in a civil union."

It's too bad he wasn't allowed to marry.

R.I.P.

[gaypalmsprings]

Stephen Gately: Hunt for mystery third man that Boyzone star and husband took back to their £1m home on night he died

By Tom Kelly and Sara Nathan

Spanish police were last night trying to trace a man who was at Stephen Gately's apartment on the night the Boyzone star mysteriously died.

Gately and partner Andy Cowles had invited a Bulgarian called Giorgio back to their £1million Majorcan holiday home after they met at a nightclub in Palma on Friday night.

The 33-year-old singer is understood to have fallen asleep on the sofa but is thought to have died after choking on his own vomit following a drinking session.

[MissingPerson]

A shame.

[bleep]

whoa nelly

[shakermaker113]

I'm glad to see that the price of his home is important enough to include in that news headline.

[MissingPerson]

And later in the article, too, in case we somehow missed it.

[MarkO]

Where it all began.

[MissingPerson]

I don't even need to click it, it's the Late Late show and I'm wincing just to think of it.

EDIT:

The host's first name is Gay. Really.

[shakermaker113]

dear lord that video was horrific.

[MarkO]

Yup, yes it was.

[gaypalmsprings]

Ha. Horrifically funny.

[M Sparks]

I'm glad to see that the price of his home is important enough to include in that news headline.

THAT'S Journalism!

So, was this band known in the US? I managed two different record stores at various times between '93 and 2000 and I've never heard of them.

[bleep]

So, was this band known in the US? I managed two different record stores at various times between '93 and 2000 and I've never heard of them.

naw...they were huge in their homeland, the UK, and Asia though. HUGE.

[MarkO]

And their managers next boy band, Westlife, made Boyzones success look like a one hit wonder.

[MusicIsMyBoyfriend]

Well Ronan's version of When You Say Nothing At All was featured in Notting Hill, and that was before he released it on his first solo album. It had been on one of their records, the greatest hits one maybe. And then there was No Matter What, which I remember seeing the video for here a few times, but yeah they weren't really that popular. My best friend was obsessed with them though and I got into them a bit as well although I perfered Westlife.

But Stephen always seemed so upbeat and adorable and this is just a shock and a shame.

[MissingPerson]

Yeah, they were kind of an Irish Take That knock off cobbled together by Louis Walsh, who, as noted went on to manage Westlife. He's now mainly known as a tv talent show judge and a completely hateful arsehole.

[MissingPerson]

Whether you knew of Gately or not, whether you've been keeping up with this story or not, you may have noticed "Jan Moir" is currently trending on Twitter.

I'd like you all to take a moment to find out why, and then take another moment to think hard about how much of a cunt Jan Moir is.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...lys-death.html

What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone's guess.

A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Gately's family have always maintained that drugs were not involved in the singer's death, but it has just been revealed that he at least smoked cannabis on the night he died.

Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family.

Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

[MissingPerson]

Jan Moir's hateful article, as posted above, did not appear in the Irish edition of the paper.

Gately's funeral was today. I was working, but it was a bigger deal than I expected. Town was very sombre altogether. He came from a poor area, and they were proud of him. The local residents made a huge effort to clean up the neighbourhood for it.

Clapping and cheering echoed through the inner city streets where Stephen Gately grew up today as the diverse worlds of pop celebrity and a working class Dublin community united to say farewell to the Boyzone star.

Three and a half thousand people stood behind crash barriers outside the St Laurence O'Toole Memorial Church while 600 mourners inside heard Gateley's bandmate Ronan Keating describe the 33-year-old as "a man, a friend, a brother, a son, a hero".

The collective grief over the loss of Gately, described by his old neighbours in Dublin's Sheriff Street area as "one of our own", was compounded by anger over the Daily Mail and its columnist Jan Moir's take on the tragedy.

In her column yesterday, Moir wrote under the headline "There was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death" that the circumstances "are more than a little sleazy" and told how he and his civil partner, Andrew Cowles, had taken a Bulgarian man to their flat in Majorca after an evening clubbing. Gately reportedly smoked cannabis on the night he died, Moir added.

Bertie Ahern, Ireland's former taoiseach, joined in the criticism of the Mail's coverage today. Speaking before signing a book of condolence on a lectern in the middle of Seville Place directly facing the church, the ex-prime minister said he could not fathom why the paper's columnist had launched what thousands have condemned as a homophobic attack on the singer's memory.

"You could see it last Sunday and Monday when I was in London and some of the papers were waiting to write some sensational piece about him. The guy [Gately] was a good guy who died of natural causes and this is his funeral so I can never understand why people just don't leave things simple," Ahern said.

Others outside the church were even more forthright in their condemnation of the Daily Mail column. Alan Hunter, who runs the Irish music radio station ShamrockFM.com, urged as many people as possible to write to the paper's editor and demand an apology for Gately's family.

"We are all very very insulted by that coverage even if people are entitled to their own opinion. There is a time and a place for everything but it was the wrong time entirely to be launching an attack like that. I certainly hope the Irish people force that newspaper's editor to apologise for the great hurt caused by that article. It's the least they can do," Hunter said.

A spokesperson for the band said it was unlikely that Gately's family would join the 1,000 or so people who have lodged complaints about the column.