[0:11]Sorry for your loss. Thanks.
[0:30]I know you must have been shocked, but were you surprised? Um, shock was definitely the first thing. Um, I had was playing a gig in Buenos Aires about two weeks previous. And he would, he was in Buenos Aires for some reason and we met up. We had a chat. He came around to my hotel room in the daytime and and we had a coffee and then he came to the gig. And he came to the gig that night and he was in the dressing room before and then you know, came to the show. Jeez, it was great to see Liam. Uh, tour ends, then I finished in Colombia, then about a week later, went home. I was only home about after a big long stint on the road. End of the tour. And then I was just at home one night, I don't know what day of the week it was. I can't remember. Um, and just looked down at my phone and I I'd gotten a text. I was just about to go to sleep and you know, and the phone lights up and you have a look, one last look.
[1:38]And I was just pure shock and I knew he'd had a couple of issues. But I wasn't because I wasn't around him like I was previous years, all the time. I didn't realize to what extent or anything like that. Um, I knew he had some stuff going on, but I wasn't aware of the depth. Um, and then you go through how why the stages of grief that I probably really haven't like touched the sides on yet. You know, I grew up with this fella and, um, all of a sudden just it's no more. It's a, it's such a strange thing. You go through like, what could I have done if I'd known more? If I should have dug more into it, like, could I have talked to other people to get an angle on it, like, you go through all sorts of stuff. And because I'd seen him the couple of weeks previous and I was a bit kind of like, Jesus, you know? And I, I imagine you have, uh, great memories of when you were having the crack and everybody was safe. Oh, stop.
[3:00]Uh, sort of a can be thing there sort of sometimes when somebody, um, self-destructs or something in a way.
[3:29]Yeah, I think just looking down at your phone, that's shock and like then stupidly turning on Sky News.
[3:41]And then going, and then the next channel CNN and BBC and Ortie News, and and the whole world is talking about us like it's, it's the biggest breaking news on the planet at that minute and it's I found it like, because I was in the pictures with him on Sky News. I found that very weird. Well, your mom's beside me. him there. You know, that's that's a strange one. Um, I don't think I've like, I don't think I've got my head around it at all, really. As I said, I've known, I shared a room with him at one of those stages at at the X Factor, like I've known him since I was 16 years old. And all of a sudden he's 32 and, you know. I also just like kept thinking of his little son and things like that. Was was there part of the coverage that you found very distasteful and hard to deal with? Was there all the judgment stuff going on, um, you know, the way people love to these days give out about other people and be the moral authority. Was that difficult to or were you good at avoiding us? I have to say, after I made the mistake of turning it on the first time, because that when I first turned it on, it was the shock. The fans, you know, and the TV, people that I'd worked with us doing interviews, it was all of that stuff. And then, uh, like I just remember going, no, I'm, I'm not doing that. I can't go any further than this, because I've got a funeral to go to and and things like that. I can't be like worrying about what they're going to say next, because like I have my own grief to deal with, like, how am I going to deal with this? The the the phases of. And then, um, yeah, like if there's all that stuff is kind of irrelevant to me, because I've, like I also have memories. I got, I want to think about them in that way, rather than than the crap they're going to talk.
[6:00]I can feel it off you, you know, the sadness of it and um. I think it's because I just haven't wrapped me head around it. It's a weird thing to be going through at 30 something, that someone two weeks older than you, can just be here today, gone tomorrow. Um.
