Eurovision’s Nicky Byrne: ‘Maybe Ireland can do a Leicester’

Nicky Byrne’s team are wearing badges that say “Shhh!”. Byrne is under strict instructions from his vocal coach to rest his voice before his performance at the second Eurovision semi-final on Thursday.

“As you can imagine, it’s almost impossible,” Byrne tells me before this moratorium. He talks a mile a minute and must navigate a succession of events and press conferences. “The opportunity to say nothing is absolutely nil.”

He has other ways to express himself. Since arriving in Stockholm he’s had an Irish tricolour hung outside his hotel window which overlooks a dual carriageway. “In rush hour in the mornings, they look up and see the Irish flag.”

In Thursday’s gloriously fun/daft semi-final he’s up against, amongst others: Danish lighthouse-keepers Lighthouse X and their amorous militarism (their song is called Soldiers of Love); Manuella from Slovenia and her stubborn refusal to recognise the colour purple (“How can we mix blue and red together?” she pleads over a jaunty banjo, while a bare-chested man writhes on a pole); some Serbian leather fetishists; sparkly Dami Im from the obscure southern European principality of Australia; a Belarusian Domhnall Gleeson lookalike who promise/threatens a performance involving nudity and wolves and an eerily great Ukrainian tune evoking the Russian expulsion of the Tartars from Crimea, but which clearly has nothing to do with the current proxy war between Russia and Ukraine. The Eurovision, as people keep insisting, is about music, not politics.

There’s a lot on the line for Nicky. He has a new album out. And he’s been selected by diktat without public input. Byrne thinks that if he does well it might encourage established performers to volunteer. “There’s a lot of snobbery towards the Eurovision but it’s an opportunity for the biggest stars in the world to represent their country on front of 200 million people. If I do well. I think [more established acts] will take that plunge.”

He could be right. The fact Justin Timberlake is performing at Saturday’s interval suggests that the Americans have just realised the value of Eurovision’s 200 million viewers. By the weekend, they’ll be claiming they invented it. Next year they’ll probably be in it (Eurovision’s “Europe” is a glittery state of mind, not a geographical landmass).

Down in Stockholm’s sunny Eurovillage, packs of school children wander, bands perform, older people picnic and couples, straight and gay, hold hands. At night there are flags — people wear the, wave them and paint them on their faces. Byrne is amazed by it all. Even his every-present tour manager, Jake, “who’s about 150 and has worked with Ozzie Osbourne” has seen nothing like it.

Byrne’s family, including father-in-law Bertie Ahern, arrive on Thursday. “It’s a family holiday, covered by me!” he adds. “Before anyone says it’s costing the tax payer.” An unofficial Nicky Byrne fan-club of five young women, “the Spice Girls,” (not the actual Spice Girls) have also turned up. “He’s always glad to see us,” says British Spice Girl Gemma Smedley, who doesn’t feel remotely disloyal for supporting Byrne over the UK act, precocious reality-show infants Joe and Jake.

Byrne’s being good, he tells me, avoiding late nights, alcohol and social media “which does nothing for your confidence.” There has been some strategic party going. He did a gig at an Irish bar called the International to which other acts were invited and there have been meet-and-greets with other singers. These are important, I’m told, so that Nicky becomes a familiar face in the foreign press before the public vote. It’s like a campaign trail? He laughs. “I never wanted to be a politician and I’m never going to be a politician but I suppose it is, yeah.”

Byrne performs twice at each stage of the competition – once (on Wednesday night) for the juries and on Thursday night, for the European people. Last week, at rehearsals, Byrne sang a wonky note while negotiating new stage moves and the footage ended up online. He sighs telling me about it. There are cameras and bloggers and vloggers everywhere.

Being on a huge stage doesn’t faze Byrne, but three minutes of singing for your country on front of 200 million people is different. He’s had encouraging advice from his Westlife bandmates and some texts from Johnny Logan, a three-time winner who is something like God in these parts (he was here bequeathing his white suit to a museum a few days ago). “One of my earliest memories,” says Byrne, “is watching him draped in a tricolour on the Eurovision stage.”

He has likened Eurovision to the “Superbowl” and “the World Cup” — but his Westlife bandmate Mark Feehily has advised him not to think of it as sport. “He said ‘Remember it’s not the World Cup. Don’t go in with that frame of mind.’ There is a part of you that wants to be Conor McGregor… but as a singer that’s not how you do it…. You’ve got to remain composed, not to be pushing.”

Ireland has won this competition more than anyone else (back when we thought winning had something to do with getting EU structural funding and before the Celtic Tiger gave us “notions”) but we’re a Eurovision underdog these days. We’ve sent cynical puppets (Dustin) and joyful muppets (Jedward) and have held the competition at a self-conscious, self-hating arms-length since our nineties heyday. “Everybody would love to see us back,” says Byrne, before going for one last sporting metaphor. “Maybe we can do a Leicester and bring it back to Dublin.”