{"id":171438,"date":"2025-12-02T18:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/171438\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T18:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:14:09","slug":"katie-hannon-reveals-her-surprising-link-to-boyzone-in-secret-past-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/171438\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie Hannon reveals her surprising link to Boyzone in &#8216;secret past life&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Katie Hannon has revealed a side to her career that most Irish listeners never knew about, and it involves the birth of one of the biggest Irish boy bands of the 90s.<\/p>\n<p>Chatting on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/radio\/radio1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">RT\u00c9 Radio One<\/a>, the broadcaster lifted the lid on what she calls her \u2018secret past life as a social diarist\u2019. <\/p>\n<p>Long before she was grilling politicians, she was hitting the Dublin nightlife circuit for the Evening Herald, filling two pages a day with who was out, what was happening, and who was talking.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Katie-Hannon-2.jpg\" alt=\"Katie Hannon\" class=\"wp-image-1696446\"  \/>Katie Hannon has revealed a side to her career that most Irish listeners never knew about, and it involves the birth of one of the biggest Irish boy bands of the 90s. Pic: RT\u00c9<\/p>\n<p>And according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/katie.hannon1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Katie,<\/a> there was one person you absolutely had to know in that era: Louis Walsh.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018As a social diarist in Dublin in the early 90s, you had to know Louis Walsh because he knew everything that moved in town,\u2019 she said. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018And he was a very good source of information. If you wanted to fill two pages of the Evening Herald every day, as I had to do.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Boyzone-1_72d318.jpg\" alt=\"Ronan Keating, Mikey Graham, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy in Boyzone's heyday\" class=\"wp-image-1593101\"  \/>Ronan Keating, Mikey Graham, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy in Boyzone\u2019s heyday. Pic: Ilpo Musto\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p>One night out, Walsh started chatting about his big idea, creating an Irish version of Take That, who were dominating the charts at the time. Next thing Katie knew, she wasn\u2019t just hearing about the plans, she was sitting in on the actual auditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Before we knew it, I was sitting in auditions for <a href=\"https:\/\/extra.ie\/2025\/11\/21\/entertainment\/ronan-keating-final-boyzone-gig\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Boyzone<\/a>, and this line of young lads were traipsing in singing,\u2019 she laughed.<\/p>\n<p>And once the lads were assembled, Katie and her fellow diarists followed the early Boyzone journey closely: \u2018\u2018That was it, then we started writing about them. These lads were being taken all over the country, up in the back of busses.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Looking back, Katie joked that her unlikely involvement earned her a pretty unique title: the \u2018Midwife of Boyzone\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the full video below:<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Hannon has revealed a side to her career that most Irish listeners never knew about, and it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-171438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}