Gift of the gab;

He charmed as a judge on 'The Voice'. But Danny O'Donoghue is even more adored for fronting Ireland's biggest band since U2. Nigel Farndale meets The Script 

 When I first meet Danny O'Donoghue in a New York bar he is having face powder applied in preparation for a photo shoot. "Oh, great," he says dryly  "Now, this is going to be the opening of your article, isn't it?" I should mention that this statement is peppered with the f-word, something O'Donoghue uses liberally and, I must say, rather musically, delivered as it is with a Dublin brogue. 

His phone rings and the caller must ask how he is because he says: "Oh, you know, underpaid, but happy as f---." And he has reason to be: at 32, he is the lead singer and keyboard player of TheScript, an indie-pop-rock band known for their catchy, bittersweet hits, such as The Man Who Can't Be Moved, Breakeven, or the more recent Hall of Fame. 

Success took a while to come - he formed the band with his old school friend Mark Sheehan in 2001 - but when it did, seven years later with a debut album that went straight to number one, it really did. Since then they have gone from supporting the likes of U2 and Paul McCartney to filling stadiums on their own. Now their third album - #3 - has just topped the charts in the United States. And as their previous albums sold nearly four million copies, I'm guessing our man isn't that underpaid. 

Sheehan (the shaven-headed one) is the guitarist. The third member of the band is Glen Power (his real name), who plays drums. They write the songs together and each is as warm, garrulous and unselfconsciously profane as the other. But Sheehan and Power don't, as they readily admit, have quite the same recognition factor as O'Donoghue, at least not since he became a coach on the BBC talent show The Voice earlier this year, attracting as much press attention for the rumour that he had an affair with one of the contestants as for his coaching. He claims it's not true, as are reports that he's already signed up for a new series of The Voice ("We're still in talks"). 

He was going out with the model Irma Mali at the time. They had been together for four years. "I was in a relationship until a few months ago," he says now. "And it just so happens we're embarking on a world tour and two of us are single! What can you do?" In an earlier incarnation he mixed cement on a building site, he adds. "That was a tough way to earn a living. This is easy." 

Sheehan is married with three children and when on tour he Skypes them every day. "But I get to live vicariously through the other lads," he says, resting his leg on a stool, an awkward manoeuvre thanks to the bondage strap attached to his trousers, but a necessary one because of a muscle he pulled on stage. "I have to say 'no' all the time. They get to say 'yes'." 

So that old Rolling Stones motto - what happens on tour stays on tour - has no relevance for the married rock star of today? "But that was before the social network," Sheehan says. "Now what happens on tour goes on Facebook." 

To say they have their fair share of female fans would be to understate the case. O'Donoghue, especially, has had hundreds of proposals of marriage via Twitter. "There's one [fan] who direct messages us every three hours," he says. "Day and night. She is talking to us like she is a best friend - 'I miss you' and so on." Another obsessive fan managed to forge press accreditation documents that were so convincing they got her as far as their dressing room. 

The three tend to interrupt each other and, as they sound quite similar on tape, I apologise if I attribute quotes wrongly, but I'm pretty sure it is Sheehan who now says: "I had a fan in Australia come up crying saying, 'I had to get this letter to you'. I put it in my pocket, got in the van and read it just when I was about to go on stage. It was a suicide note! Her friend had committed suicide a month earlier and one of her dying wishes was that this letter got to us." 

They made some inquires after the gig and came to the conclusion it was probably a hoax. Either way it was a salutary lesson about the trappings of fame. Nowadays, O'Donoghue wears a disguise when out in public, though it doesn't always help because he is 6ft 4in and has a distinctive quiff that makes him even taller, not to mention a large "Irish Power" tattoo on his arm. "I wear an Aztec hat with dog ears," he says. "And sometimes sunglasses and a big puffy jacket. In the street it buys you that extra two seconds before they go 'Is that…?' and then you are past." 

Even when he is wearing fancy dress he gets spotted. "I went to a party as Edward Scissorhands. Black make-up. Hair all over the place. I still had two girls chasing me down the road screaming, 'I'd know that walk anywhere'." 

The Danny O'Donoghue walk has featured on a couple of their videos, you see. "His best disguise is if he stands still," Power says with a roll of his eyes. 

They are here in Manhattan on a crisp autumn afternoon to do some television interviews - including The Today Show on NBC tomorrow morning - before playing the legendary Radio City Music Hall (known as "the showplace of the nation") tomorrow night. Following that there will be an aftershow party (where Liam Neeson is expected to be among the guests) then they fly out first thing the next morning to Los Angeles to do the Ellen DeGeneres Show. 

I ask if they feel nervous about this gig, it being in the largest indoor theatre in the world. "No, because we are known here," O'Donoghue says. "I'm actually thinking more about the rest of America - Idaho, or wherever. That will be more like the trenches. We'll have to jump on Twitter and do the radio stations and really promote it." 

Theirs is a busy schedule, with 30 dates in a row. "Any ailments have to be worked out," Sheehan says. "You have to be match fit. It's a five-hour physical activity each day because we also do an hour's rehearsal before a gig. You just can't stay up drinking 'til 5am." 

What they enjoy most about their shows is when the audience takes over the singing. O'Donoghue says its never fails to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. But is he ever worried that he will point the microphone at the audience one day and that won't happen? "No because as a performer it is up to you to sense whether they will respond or not, so there are some nights I hold back. We have these in-ear monitors on stage which block out the sound of the crowd so we can hear ourselves sing, and the first time it happened I popped them out and was blown away. A giant choir of 60,000 people singing my own song back to me. It was overwhelming. I almost choked." 

We talk about how The Beatles stopped touring because they couldn't hear themselves sing for all the screaming. This was especially true of their biggest gig at the Shea Stadium in 1965. When the stadium reopened as the Citi Field in 2009, they asked Paul McCartney to do the honours, and in turn he asked The Script to be his support act. Did they feel the hand of history on their shoulders that night? "It was demystified for us because Paul came back to our dressing room," O'Donoghue says. "I'd been wondering what it was going to be like to meet him, because he is a legend, you know, how am I supposed to address him? But he just came in and started chatting to us." 

About? "He'd seen us play a small gig in Shepherd's Bush Empire and he wanted to know how we felt about going from that to playing big gigs, so he was probing about that," Sheehan says. "He said you don't have to be larger than life on stage, you just let the microphones pick you up." 

Sheehan is the band member with the business nous. He negotiated all their record deals and in the early years was the manager. "Our thinking was that no one else was going to look after our money like we would," says O'Donoghue. "When we first got money I wanted to go and blow it on Rolex's and cars and b-------, but Mark wouldn't let me. He made us pay off our debts then put it in the bank. We paid ourselves a small wage and we still do." 

What is it like when they come off stage and the sound of cheering fades from their ears? Does it leave them feeling a bit flat? "Immediately afterwards is fine because we are coming down and chatting and saying, 'Jeez did you see that woman in the front who took her top off?' " 

"They always wait until the last song to take their tops off together in the front row," Power explains. 

"The adrenalin does mean that three hours after a gig we're not going to sleep," O'Donoghue says. "We're in a bubble. When we finish the show we are transported out really quick to an after-show party where we meet record company people, then we're back on the bus doing our stretching exercises so as we don't pull muscles, and then we sleep as we drive through the night to the next town." 

We talk about Killing Bono, the film written by the Telegraph's rock critic Neil McCormick about what it was like almost being in U2. "Yeah, there are always casualties when a band takes off,"O'Donoghue says. "It was very brave of him to write that. Even for us, friends who were always around all the time in Dublin unfortunately put you on a pedestal. When we go to the local bar they see a different person walking in but for me I am the same, ordering the same drink." 

Does it make him feel self-conscious? "It does yeah, especially now things are getting bigger and bigger. I find myself checking my flies when I go in which I never used to do, because I know everyone will look at me. They forget that you make your money from having good hearing and you can hear the things they are whispering about you." 

"But that's more Danny than Glen and me," Sheehan says. "And I prefer it that way because it means I can have a private life. The only time I can't have that is when we are together in airports. Put my bald head next to him and we're f-----. Instant recognition." 

What about the economic gloom when they go back home to Ireland? "We notice it every time," O'Donoghue says. "We feel we have to be tactful. There's a guy I used to play with for six years who was telling me he can't get any gigs, that it was so hard. When he asked what I was up to I didn't want to tell him." (As a gesture of solidarity they have dropped all their ticket prices in Ireland.) 

I ask what it is like staying in a hotel when you are in a rock band. Are the managers nervous about televisions being thrown out of windows? "We're not like that," O'Donoghue says. "Although the first night I was staying in the hotel we are in at the moment, I came down at midnight and asked for some Jack Daniel's. When the woman behind the bar asked if I wanted a shot I said 'no, I want the whole bottle'. Well, it was my birthday. Normally I would have run over to Asda to get a cheaper bottle." 

What is their equivalent of the notorious Van Halen contract clause that a bowl of M&Ms must be placed in their dressing room every night, with all the brown ones removed? "Our only demand is that we are kept supplied with tea and Grey Goose Vodka," Sheehan says. 

Is that to steady nerves before a gig? "No, the only thing we have before a gig is Epsom salts for our muscles. Seriously. They keep you supple." When I note that this doesn't sound very rock and roll, he laughs. "Would it help the article if I said we snorted them?" 

A good line on which to end. And for the record, at the Radio City gig the following night, which I attend, the 6,000 capacity audience does shout, and dance, and sing along to all their songs, even the new ones, which O'Donoghue introduces by saying things like "I hope you won't mind, but we'd like to play something off the new album now, if that's OK." Again, not very rock and roll, but very polite. 

As they are leaving the stage, there is a moment that I find unexpectedly moving. The crowd carries on singing the words to their final song before eventually fading out as the lights come on. At the after-show party O'Donoghue is wearing Michael Caine glasses, though not as a disguise. When he greets me with a hug, I tell him that bit at the end gave me goosebumps. "Yeah, me too," he says. "It was unbelievable." And so it was. 

The Script tour the UK from Feb 28. A new single, 'Six Degrees of Separation', is released on November 25 

'The only thing we have before a gig is Epsom salts for our muscles. They keep you supple' 

Source: The Sunday Telegraph