KIAN Egan once begged his Westlife pals to keep the band on the road — and knew the dream was over when his plea was met with stoney silence.

In one of his most revealing interviews since the group went their separate ways, the singer admits to seeing the cracks appearing in their relationships.

But he still thought they had more to give their fans.

He said: “There might have been another year or two in it but the cracks were getting bigger and bigger.”

Revealing how Westlife came to split in 2012 after 14 years together, Kian said: “In one way, we needed to end exactly when we ended.

“Relationships were spreading. It became very much, show up, do the job and go. The fun had disappeared.

“It’s quite funny — once the decision had been made that it was going to end, the fun all of a sudden reappeared.

“The last six months of the band were a hoot. We were in the pubs together, drinking together like it was the first time we’d gone on stage. The pressure had seriously been released.”

But Kian still thought they had more in them and urged the others to reconsider.

He said: “I remember one night we were in China, and we were in the Irish pub and we got a cab and it was just the four of us.

“We were all fairly sauced and I remember turning around and going, ‘Lads, seriously, we’re making a huge mistake here’.

“And you could hear the silence. There and then I just knew.

‘I still get confused as to what was going on in Brian’s head’ “So I probably had another year or two in me, I don’t know if the other boys did. I think half of us could have given it another year or two but the other half couldn’t.

“But in hindsight, I feel like it was the right decision.”

Their remarkable story began when Sligo pals Kian, Shane Filan and Mark Feehily put together a six-piece guy group, and Shane’s mum sent their CD to Louis Walsh.

The pop guru signed them up but almost immediately axed three of the boys and brought in Dubliners Nicky Byrne and Brian McFadden.

Brian broke hearts in 2004 when he announced he was leaving Westlife to spend more time with his family, only to release a solo single just six months later.

Kian revealed: “I still get confused as to what was going on in Brian’s head as to why he walked out on Westlife when he did. We had only tipped the iceberg.

“Brian said he wanted out of the industry. Then months later he released a solo album.

“He left three weeks before a tour. He put us in a real limbo situation of ‘this could really be over for us. If it doesn’t go well as a four piece we’re done’.

“I remember ringing my mum the night that he left and I actually said to her, ‘so the band will probably be over in a few months, Mam’.”

Instead, they went on to become the biggest boyband in Europe, something 34-year-old Kian reckons was a middle finger to the Dubliner who they felt had deserted them.

He said: “We did our first night in Belfast of the tour and the reaction was incredible.

“So, boom — that was it, Westlife was a four-piece and we were continuing on no matter what Brian was doing.

“It became, ‘right we’re going to show him’ type attitude. ‘We can do this, f*** you’, if you like.

“The four of us are Westlife now buddy, you’re no longer part of it.

“You see all little lines that you sang here, there and everywhere? You don’t sing them anymore.”

With Shane and Mark the strongest singers in the group, Kian took on the role of a mini-manager, a title that caused some friction.

He said: “I had a bad name in Westlife. I was the bully who went, ‘that’s not right, that’s not right. Why are we doing this? Why aren’t we doing that?’ I was that guy.

“I was the guy who came in and threw the toys out of the pram.

“In my brain it wasn’t that I was more into it, it was what became my role almost in Westlife.

“As far as I was concerned, we were all of equal parts on the stage but Shane would spend a lot more time in the recording studio, so would Mark, so I took my time into this and helped the ship along.”

The group’s goodbye tour finished in Croke Park, which was streamed live to cinemas across the world.

One Direction followed in their footsteps and played three sold-out shows at the stadium last summer.

However dad Kian, who is expecting his second child with Jodi Albert, said they had something bigger than today’s heart-throbs.

He said: “The music industry in those days was a very different animal. A physical copy was what people went out to buy to get a number one, now it’s a download.

“Our fanbase were just obsessed with having a copy of absolutely everything that we had.

“I say this in no disrespect to One Direction, but One Direction will never sell what Westlife sold. They might be a bigger band and a bigger phenomenon, they might do bigger concerts, but record sales wise they will never be able to manage it because the record industry isn’t that size anymore.”

Kian now splits his time with his family between London and here, where he is a judge on the Voice of Ireland.

On the possibility of the boys getting back together, he said he can’t see it happening any time soon.

Speaking to Jarlath Regan on the comedian’s An Irishman Abroad blog, he said: “There has been no major fall-outs — we’re in very little contact but there’s been no negativity between each other. We all get on so there’s no reason why we couldn’t manage to pull it together again.

“It’s not a question of that really, it’s more of a question of, ‘is everybody going to want to do it again?’

“Yeah, we could be back together in five years’ time. Just as easily we may never step on a stage together again.”

@Nicola_IrishSun ¿VISIT Jarlath Regan’s web blog at anirishmanabroad.podbean.com to hear the full interview.

Source: thesun.ie