Mark Feehily and Kevin McDaid talk about Mariah

	Mark Feehily and Kevin McDaid

Did you swap numbers the first night?

Kevin: What secured it was our love for our divas. Mark has his diva, Mariah Carey and I have mine, Christina Aguilera. [laughing] He was the first person that understood how I felt.

Are you obsessed with Mariah, Mark?

Mark: I wouldn't say obsessed. As a young person I wanted her to be my big sister. I didn't have a sister and she was the epitome of beauty for me. She always looked so sad when she was singing and then you learn the story of how she's like the princess locked away in the mansion and... the voice? She seemed to totally understand gospel music, which I love so much. I saw her performing when I was about ten. She was performing live on some American TV show and my dad called me down "come here, Mark, look at this one, you'll like her" and I literally just stood and froze for a while at her performance of Without You. She is amazing.

What did it feel like to work with Mariah, Mark?

Kevin: I would wet myself.

Mark: I imagined her to have this huge, imaginary, fabulous, lavish lifestyle. There was a time when I was in Thailand with Westlife. I'd always ask the porters when we were away who'd stayed at the hotel and I asked this guy and he said Mariah Carey and it seemed impossible to me. I had this silly illusion that she was so far removed from reality she couldn't possible have stayed in that hotel. Luckily by the time I got to meet her I'd come to terms a bit more with what celebrity was and what being a fan of somebody was because we had our own fans. The really annoying thing was that the first time I met her Westlife has just been nominated for an MTV award and we had a press conference day. I didn't even know that she was going to be there until I got there.

Kevin: Tell him about the phone call. That must've been the maddest point...

Mark: I'll get to that in a minute. They put me in front of an entire press conference to meet her. And I'd waited ten years for this. For f**k's sake, they couldn't have made me look like more of a twat and she was in full bloom on a chaise longue.

Kevin: With a fan, blowing her.

Mark: I just said "Hi, Mariah, it's really nice to meet you" and she said "I heard you're a big fan of mine." I'd got over meeting her when we worked with her.

Did you actually work in the studio with her?

Mark: Absolutely. It wasn't phoned in. We worked out the BVs together. She did the main vocal in New York but we did BVs and additional stuff together. It was in her house in Capri.

You did the famous video where Bryan McFadden's staring at her breasts for the entire song at the same time?

Mark: Yeah. The maddest thing was when I was sitting in my living room in my house in Galway - the same living room my dad had called me down to see her in all those years earlier - and my mum said "Mark! It's Mariah Carey on the phone!" F**k me. It was before we performed Hero with her in Manchester and she was calling to go through what we were going to do with the BVs. I was just thinking all the way through the conversation, "F**king hell, I wish I was taking this phon call on my computer so I could record it." Mariah singing down the phone to me in my mum's living room. I put the phone down and didn't remember one f**king thing that she said. For me, things like that are the things that make this job the best one in the world.

Kevin: Those things don't happen very often and no one can take tham away because they're so special to you.

Mark: And I'll say this as well, we've worked with a lot of people who are not nearly as big as her who've been very difficult to get stuff out of.

Kevin: She always asks after Mark.

Do you have any brothers and sisters?

Mark: I've two younger brothers. No sisters.

Apart from Mariah Carey?

Mark: She's my soul sista.

[talking about Stevie Wonder]

Mark: But it was great to meet him anyway. That's the stuff that I progressed to after finding Mariah Carey when I was ten. Vocally she has a side to her that people don't credit her with. She can really sing. I love big voices.

(excerpt from Attitude - thanks to Matthew)