{"id":388348,"date":"2026-04-08T16:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388348\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T16:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:19:08","slug":"the-singers-grief-is-raw-and-real-during-his-travels-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388348\/","title":{"rendered":"The singer\u2019s grief is raw and real during his travels \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Grief works differently for everyone but anybody who has experienced loss will feel for Ronan Keating who has returned to Ireland to make a travel show, Ronan Keating\u2019s Wild Atlantic, that is less about the sights and sounds of coastal Ireland than an articulation of his pain over the death nearly three years ago of his older brother Ciar\u00e1n.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Keating has had a successful TV career between Boyzone reunions \u2013 he has hosted The One Show on the BBC and been a judge on The Voice Australia. He is a great travel show presenter too and speaks with genuine warmth about his love of the west of Ireland, recalling childhood holidays along the Atlantic coastline. But the sightseeing takes a back seat as he talks about Ciar\u00e1n, who was killed in a car crash in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Ciar\u00e1n was driving from his home in Westport to Sligo to watch his son Ruair\u00ed play for Cork City when he was killed in a collision. The driver of the other vehicle was later given a suspended sentence for careless driving causing death \u2013 a verdict Keating described as unjust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/music\/2025\/10\/03\/why-have-boyzone-decided-to-reform-and-why-now\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Why have Boyzone decided to re-form \u2013 and why now?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">The anguish has stayed with the singer, and when he meets Ruair\u00ed in west Cork, he struggles with the emotion. \u201cI never get to say it, but like I was the baby. He was my older brother, eldest brother, and he was my hero, and I always looked up to him, you know,\u201d he says. His nephew talks about how, whenever he scores a goal for Cork City, he looks to the heavens, where he is sure his father is looking down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">\u201cIt\u2019s the same for me playing football too. I always look up and still think I can see him there,\u201d says Ruair\u00ed. \u201cIt\u2019s always the hardest part as well after games. I used to check my phone. The first thing I\u2019d see is my dad\u2019s name. Looking at my phone and not seeing that any more \u2013 it\u2019s really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">The moment is heartbreaking and Keating\u2019s pain comes to the surface a second time in the episode when he visits a Buddhist temple on the Beara Peninsula. As he sits opposite a chant master who is leading a prayer, he is genuinely upset as he looks inward and reflects on his loss.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">This isn\u2019t the first time Keating has been emotional on camera. He was open and vulnerable throughout the 2025 Boyzone documentary, No Matter What \u2013 one of the most unflinching music documentaries of the past several years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">But whatever regrets he felt over his music career pale beside the death of a family member. In Ronan Keating\u2019s Wild Atlantic, his feeling of loss for his brother is raw and real and that thread of pain running through this series places it in a category of one: it is a pilgrimage home that doubles as an unfiltered and very moving meditation on grief. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grief works differently for everyone but anybody who has experienced loss will feel for Ronan Keating who has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,1253,6231,93,61,60,1252,32864],"class_list":{"0":"post-388348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-boyzone","10":"tag-charles-haughey","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-ronan-keating","15":"tag-wild-atlantic-way"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388348","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=388348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}