A heartbreaking interview with The Script’s Danny O’Donoghue about loss left BBC Radio 2’s Vernon Kay brimming with tears, as the Irish singer attempted to comfort him
Vernon Kay got emotional on air(Image: BBC Radio 2)
BBC Radio 2 presenter Vernon Kay was forced to call a halt to his broadcast for a few moments amid a deeply emotional interview with The Script frontman Danny O’Donoghue, for the show’s Tracks Of My Years segment. Discussing former bandmate Mark Sheehan, who died at the age of 46 in 2023, Danny said the guitarist had a difficult start in life.
“His father passed when he was 13,” Danny explained. “He was from a very rough area in Dublin as well. He had a quite a tough upbringing, but to see somebody like that in the studio being able to articulate what that meant to him, for his father to leave, was insane.”
Mark had drawn on his life experiences, in particular how losing his father had affected him, for a number of the band’s songs: “I was in the band – one of the best lyricists of all time,” Danny said. “They teach his lyrics in Berklee [College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts] but both of us never graduated from school. I’ve got dyslexia.”
‘If You Could See Me Now,’ from The Script’s third studio album, #3, directly addresses the death of Danny’s father and Mark’s parents. “He wrote that about his dad and now I’m singing that about him on stage,” Danny said.
Vernon became visibly emotional after asking Danny if he’d “had an open forum conversation about how much you loved him” when Mark was diagnosed with an illness, shortly before the musician’s tragic death.
Danny admitted: “Yeah. It wasn’t as long as you would have liked it to be, because it was quite a short period of time between me finding out and him passing, but we did.”
Mark Sheehan and Danny O’Donoghue had been friends from childhood(Image: Sergione Infuso – Corbis, Corbis via Getty Images)
He went on to share: “I look back on it and go, even if we didn’t have that conversation, I knew. I’ve known him since I was 13-years-old, do you know what I mean?”
Vernon welled up as he confessed to Danny: “It’s got me, that.” He tried to continue by introducing Danny’s next track, but his voice trembled with emotion. “Give me a minute,” the BBC host said, as he wiped away a tear.
Danny kindly comforted the presenter, saying “oh, dude”, as a still-tearful Vernon explained: “I just think that, when you have that relationship with a friend, it’s special.”
Following the interview, Vernon explained his emotional reaction to BBC Radio 2 listeners. He shared: “The reason I broke down is because I’ve got great mates, do you know? I’ve got fab mates, and I can’t imagine going through what Danny went through with Mark.”
Mark and Danny had first worked together in Mytown, a boy band put together by Irish music mogul Louis Walsh, but the group folded after one album: “We released a song, did mediocre, released the album, didn’t go too well, and then dropped by the label,” Danny ruefully reflected.
Danny comforted Vernon as the presenter became clearly tearful(Image: BBC)
He added: “For every, hundred bands signed, there’s only one that really makes it. But we were probably the 99th one that didn’t make it at all”
But undeterred by the frustrating experience, the two friends went on to form The Script.
It was eight years before the band’s debut album was to emerge, but the response was immediately positive, with their first single We Cry receiving significant airplay from RTÉ 2FM, Today FM and BBC Radio 1’s Jo Whiley.
Every one of The Script’s albums has hit the top of the Irish charts, as well making the Top 3 in the official UK chart. But the loss of Mark Sheehan, both as guitarist and as lyricist, hit them hard.
Danny admitted that he nearly went “off the rails” and turned to heavy drinking and smoking to cope with the sudden loss. He told People magazine at the time: “I’m going through a really, really tough time – I think I’m handling it in the best way I possibly can.”
Danny says performing the song these days is fraught with emotion(Image: SOPA Images, SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
He added: “Guys are so s*** at talking about how they f***ing feel. All I’m here doing is trying to just show people ‘Look, if you let it out, it’s a lot better. If you let it out, great things can happen’. People think you let it out, bad things are going to happen. Nothing but good has happened to me in my life.”
Danny pointed out that turning to drink as a way to cope with personal problems is always a mistake: “Actually, the worst thing you can do is go and drink alcohol, because what you’re inevitably doing is kicking those issues down the road.
“It’s b****y tough, man.” He added. “I came back after I spent pretty much most of Christmas just drinking my a** off, trying to forget stuff. I came back on the 27th of December and I just said, “That’s it.” So I quit alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine even. You can imagine all of those on the one day. I started going to church every day, and then I work out three times a week.”