by Scott McLennan

You wouldn’t guess it from Brian McFadden’s deliciously soapy ode to his fiancée Delta, but beyond the puppy love of Like Only A Woman Can lurks a speed freak and lawbreaker. Animatedly chatting to Rip It Up while in Adelaide to promote his deceptively impressive new album Set In Stone, the mischievous Irishman admits to previous troubles with the law.

“When it comes to driving the car I’m not really a rebel, but I don’t really abide by the rules very much,” Brian admits. “I was cuffed once, but it wasn’t my fault. I lived in a place called Wicklow, which was only a small place but there were a lot of rich people and celebrities there. There was a list of 10 people in the county who were high risk kidnap targets, so the chief of police came to me when I first moved there and said that I was on the list as there had been threats. They’d heard through the grapevine that someone was plotting to kidnap my kid to try and get a ransom, but you get that all the time. There had been guys with a light who had been pulling people over and then robbing cars, so I was told if I was ever in doubt then I should just drive to the nearest police station.

“I was heading into Dublin from the countryside and was really late for a meeting. At the time I was about 19 and had a green BMW with tinted out windows, spoiler and the works. This car pulled up beside me in the traffic and these two skinhead fucking guys with zipped up tracksuits were looking in the window at me. I was like, ‘Fuck this!’ and took off so I could lose them. I was doing about 120 or 130 miles an hour and completely lost them, since they were in an older Audi or something. I took off into the distance and three or four miles later I came into the urban areas and slowed down in the traffic. I’ve seen the guys come up behind me and they pulled up. One jumped out, got into my passenger seat, grabbed my [seat]belt and locked it in and took out his badge. They were undercover police and they thought I was a drug dealer. He still didn’t know who I was when he cuffed me and put me against the car while they checked in car and boot and asked me all these questions.”

The cases of mistaken identity could continue with Brian’s new album, with the full-scale rock of tracks such Get Away and Room To Breathe a world away from his career with international superstars Westlife. Critics have suggested Room To Breathe’s angry lyric is directed at Brian’s ex-wife, Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona.

“I’d had the chorus for that one on the piano for ages and really wanted to do something with it. I wanted a song where I could say, ‘Okay, my life is here now, but just so you know, this was how I felt, this is how I feel, I’m putting it all behind me and moving on’.”

You would have known there’d be plenty of media speculation about who it’s about?

“A little bit. The chorus – ‘Well I told you not to call me ‘cause I just can’t stand your voice’ - I didn’t care, because that’s what I wanted to say, but I was cautious about how I wrote the verses so that it was open to interpretation. Everyone’s pretty sure of themselves what they think it’s about, but I’m never going to stand here and say what it is.”

The UK tabloid interest in McFadden remains strong despite him now spending a good deal of time in Australia. The nitpicking included a newspaper recently slamming his ‘blue cowboy boots’.

“Yeah, they said I was trying to be Indiana Jones or something. Fuck off! The best part about that one was that it came from an Irish newspaper – what the fuck do Irish people know about fashion? In the old days if there was a story in an Irish newspaper it would stay in Ireland, but now with the internet it’s harder.

“On Nova this morning we were having a laugh and they were talking about Claudia Schiffer being in the [Westlife] Uptown Girl video. I was joking and saying she had a massive crush on me, was following me around and kept giving me the eyes. I said I walked past my dressing room at one stage and she was sniffing my undies, but I just know that in three days the English papers will say ‘Brian McFadden: Claudia Schiffer Sniffed My Undies’ and Claudia Schiffer will sue me. I’m sure Nova listeners would have laughed but the English will find a way to make it into a big deal.”

While his words have the habit of being misconstrued, being Brian McFadden can still have its advantages – even if Delta has a habit of ruining his good fortune.

“One perk I got was a loan of a BMW in Sydney. This guy from the prestige car company rings me and tells me to go down and take my pick and I can have it for free while I’m here. I’m standing there among the Porsches Cayenne Turbos and Range Rovers and I can’t believe it. Delta goes over to a black X5 BMW and says to the guy she wants this one. I’m like, ‘What? I could get a Porsche here’. And she says, ‘This one’s black, so it goes with everything’. I’m like, ‘You silly bitch! There’s $200,000 Porsche Cayenne Turbos and you take the three-year-old X5?’.

“What a girly thing to do – take the black one because it goes with everything!”

Brian McFadden’s Set In Stone is out now through UMA.