Poor Brian McFadden has had the worst luck
GOSH, but hasn’t poor old Brian McFadden had a desperate run of bad luck, all the same? He just hasn’t caught a break since the age of 18, when he was snatched from his idyllic existence as a bit-part actor in Dublin and dragooned into a boy band called Westlife.
At the whim of Louis Walsh, Brian was cruelly forced to travel the world, with only a succession of five-star hotels and first-class airline lounges to call home, in the company of four other captives.
He was made to sing and dance before screaming mobs of girls all over the world, even though he couldn’t sing or dance to save his life, and brutally condemned to be a millionaire by his mid-20s.
Aged just 22, he married a pretty pop star called Kerry, prompting comparisons with the Beckhams, and they had two pretty little girls. But misfortune was waiting round the corner yet again – a lap dancer came forward and claimed he’d slept with her on his stag night.
Brian initially accused her of making ‘obscene and damaging’ allegations, but, alas for our luckless hero, he had to issue a formal apology to the lap dancer, who was telling the truth all the time.
Astonishingly, this incident may have caused some strife at home, since his marriage to Kerry ended just two years later. But then, in yet another stroke of bad luck, he met up with an even more beautiful and even richer pop star called Delta.
THEY got engaged during a holiday in Bali in 2007 – really, does this man’s misfortune know no bounds? – and he left his little daughters behind in England to shack up with her Down Under. When they called off their engagement in 2011, they vowed to remain friends until, a few years later, Delta revealed she’d been ‘really unhappy and didn’t know how to get out’ of their relationship.
Then, just a month after that split, Brian met a still more gorgeous model/actress called Vogue and he married her in Tuscany – I know, surely there’s only so much one man can take? – the following year. Grown men wept for his plight.
Once again, he was completely blameless when his career in Australia took a hit after he released Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar).
Some condemned it as a date rapist’s charter for including lines like ‘Drunk as s*** dancing at the bar/I can’t wait to get you home/So I can do some damage/So I can take advantage’, which was totally not his f ault, even though he wrote it himself.
Just recently, he complained of having squandered much of his millions (after he left Westlife to pursue a less-than-glittering solo career) on ‘fast cars and private jets’ – could life get any more cruel?
Apparently so. This week, yet more random adversity has befallen poor Brian. He is splitting from Vogue after fewer than three years together: that’s two marriages and one engagement gone belly-up before the age of 35. His fellow Westlifers are all happily coupled up – Nicky Byrne is still with the woman he met as a schoolboy – so Brian has every reason to feel dogged by ill-luck.
Only the hardest of hearts would suggest he brought this series of unfortunate events on himself – as he has had more breaks, more chances and more blessings than most folk dream of in a lifetime, and that he has wasted each and every one.
He has had love, fame, riches, success, he has two beautiful daughters, he’s travelled the world and enjoyed the best that money could buy.
Some might say there’s a common denominator in all the mishaps that have left Brian alone, and less financially comfortable than his former band-mates, as he approaches middle-age. Some might even think it’s him.
Unless Brian breaks the habit of a lifetime, though, and takes a long hard look at himself, he is unlikely to agree.
Instead, on past form he’ll probably bounce back with an even younger, more gorgeous model/actress/singer by the end of the week, and crow about how happy he is, and how she’s the love of his life.
And he will be just as bewildered, and just as sorry for himself, when the next bolt of utterly unforeseeable misfortune strikes from a clear, blue sky.