By Liadan Hynes
Sunday Jul 18 2010

'Oh, every day," Una exclaims when I ask her if, in her days as a singer-songwriter gigging around Ireland, she ever thought, "This is just not going to happen."

"I'd be going, 'When is it gonna happen, when is it gonna happen?'" The 28-year-old Tipperary native says, smiling at the memory.

"I wrote songs about when is it gonna happen, why is it taking so long. So Long, So Long is a song I wrote," she giggles self-deprecatingly.

Was it tough, the years spent struggling in anonymity? "It was. Well," she pauses to qualify that, ever determined to see the positive side. "You feel, I wouldn't like to still be doing that, 'cause it'd be like, 'Where am I going?' You know? But I felt at the time it was necessary. And I enjoyed the place where I was at; I didn't want to be at the top or anything. I was enjoying getting there and that."

It's been a long day for Una. Having flown in to Dublin the night before, she has been on the go since half six in the morning. It's now almost four, and she's had only a 10-minute break between photo calls and interviews, promoting Diet Coke's Love it Light Roadshow.

In pictures of girl band The Saturdays, Una appears the beanpole of the group, all slender limbs; long, straight auburn hair and a narrow, slim face. In person, she's actually quite small -- 5ft 7in, which she tells me hampered her brief modelling career. She's wearing a hazel-green crocheted dress which matches her almond-shaped eyes. Una is a natural beauty, requiring none of the hard-edged French manicuring and hair extensions of your average pop wannabe.

When we sit down to chat, she seems understandably a little wilted, and every so often stares into space, as if she has lost her train of thought. Possibly a result of the years spent gigging in anonymity in pubs and restaurants around Ireland, there's a humility to Una that makes her instantly likeable, an endearingly vulnerable air. She has something of the winning Cheryl Cole mixture of warmth and vulnerability.

"Well, I was doing the singer-songwriter thing, but you don't really get paid for that, so it's not really a job," she bursts out laughing, when I ask about life before she became a fully paid-up girl-band member with The Saturdays, complete with sports-star boyfriend, numerous sponsorship deals and top 10 hits. "You know, I was just working jobs on the minimum wage, a singer-songwriter around Dublin," she jokes.

Needless to say, singing in various bars around the south of the country, then later Dublin, didn't pay the rent. "I joined John Compton's modelling agency," she says of her short-lived modelling career, one of several efforts to bring in extra income.

"Obviously I'm not tall enough to be, like, a fashion model," she says. "I did a few jobs, nothing much. And then, you know, I also did a bit of extra work in Fair City."

Apart from swimming -- she was the All-Ireland under-nine swimming champion -- music had always been her thing. "I got into music as a young teenager. My uncle's Declan Nerney. He inspired me in loads of ways. And my mother gave me a guitar when I was really young and I started playing it and writing.

"And down in school I used to sing my own original songs for Junior and Leaving Cert," she explains. "I got As in both of them. Fifty per cent was practical so I was like, 'Oh, I'm quite good at this, I think, and I love it.'"

But music wasn't viewed as a permanent and pensionable career choice. "I kind of knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a singer, but I knew I had to find a career to fall back on. Even though that isn't necessarily true," she says of how she's now changed her mind on the subject of following one's dreams.

"The advice I give to anyone is if they want to do music and they've a passion for it, then they should just go for it. I think you should follow your passion.

"I went through the CAO book so many times, I used to have endless nights crying, 'I can't pick one thing that I wanna do,'" she wails in desperate, frustrated tones. "So it was suggested to me to try out primary teaching; I had the points, because I studied quite hard in school.

"I just didn't like it. I did three months. And then I went and tried nursing. Because my mother's a nurse, and she used to talk about the crack she used to have. I thought I'd love it too, and I didn't. I actually did a year and a half. You know, I passed the exams and all that. It's really tough, the study for nursing. And the commitment. And I kept walking down the corridors of the wards thinking, 'I just want to be out there, I want to be out on stage performing. I don't wanna do this.'

"I just left, and that was when I went and got a PA system, and started looking up where to gig. I used to practise every day," she says earnestly, rocking forward in a momentary air-guitar impression to emphasise her point. "Getting the 30-songs set-list ready to gig. Covers, like. I used to play everything. Britney Spears to the Eagles to Bryan Adams . . . Sting."

With her parents' support, Una started gigging in pubs and hotels around Tipperary, Limerick and Kilkenny. "My parents were so good," she says, "they used to come with me, my mother would come everywhere with me, and she'd help me set up the PA system."

Having made some contacts who told her she had promise, but that she needed to move to the capital to take things further, she moved to Dublin at the age of 23.

"I did two years in Dublin, and then I was 25 when I went for the audition for the band. I saw an audition and I just flew over, and it was as simple as that really. There were a few hundred girls originally. They kind of enticed me in, 'cause I'd to leave to get a plane. They said, 'We want to call you in first 'cause we're really keen on having you in the band, but we feel you mightn't be that interested 'cause you're from such a different background.' I was like, 'Well, I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be in the band.'

"They said, 'We like you because you're different.' And I've always been able to incorporate who I was before the band. I play my guitar when we do the live stuff, in acoustic, ballads and that. They knew I wasn't typical girl band, they knew I had done the hard road, had lots of experience, knew I wouldn't let them down. Once I said I was committed, that was it."

While she certainly looks the part, Una, whose idol is singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, displays none of the brash, in-your-face self-confidence typical of the girl-band breed.

Was the audition process intimidating?

"Well, it was, originally," she says, "because some of the girls were giving it loads; professional dancers, but they obviously then couldn't sing, and that was what stood to me. I sang a cappella in the auditions.

"It was scary at first, it used to take me a lot longer to pick up the dance steps than the other girls, but I pick the steps up more quickly than them now, I'm more relaxed," she says, with a half-smile, half-grimace that tells of a hard-won confidence.

"I can get very shy. Like, I got very shy today when I walked out there and saw all these girls," she smiles softly, gesturing to the door of the warehouse we're sitting in, and the three-storey-high stairwell overlooking the car park, where she made her entrance earlier to a group of 79 girls gathered below, waiting to join her to launch the Diet Coke Love it Light Roadshow.

"They were all in white and I was in red. I got soooooo embarrassed. 'Cause they started playing Issues. And I just got a bit intimidated by so many people I'd never met before. I was quite nervous actually, around all the people. I'm confident," she pauses to think about it. "I need to be confident to get out there. I'm confident that I could probably stand and sing you a song now and not get shy about that. You need confidence, but not a cocky confidence. Stage-presence confidence and that, but I don't think it ever needs to go beyond that to be a cockiness. That's why I like to stay grounded.

"The group has a book coming out in September. We describe each other. They said somewhere that Una's either really loud or really quiet. Me and Vanessa are always in the back of the car. We're usually the quietest. We like to just chill out and kind of go into our own zones and that. You kind of need that bit of time to get away from everything."

What does she get stressed about? "I used to get very stressed out when I was younger, and I've grown out of that, I think," she says. "I've become a lot more chilled. I used to get really worried, and I'd stress and worry about things I didn't need to worry about. I just really care about stuff, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist. And if something isn't right I get a bit panicky about it. Because I just want everything to be right. It's more myself, I put the pressure on myself. If I haven't done something to the best of my ability I'll always look back and think, 'Why didn't I do that? Why didn't I say that?'"

Did the years on the singer-songwriter circuit help when it came to dealing with the attention The Saturdays have enjoyed? "A couple of the girls were in S Club Juniors," she says. "They had done the pop thing, so they brought that experience and then I brought a different wealth of experience, where it was like the tough, hard road."

Her boyfriend, English rugby international Ben Foden, whom she has been dating for a year and a half, also helps keep her grounded. "We were both early on in our careers back then," she recalls of when they first met. "We were only on our second single. I wasn't really that famous back then. And Ben hadn't played for England before he met me. He met me and then he was selected on the England squad. We both have grown together, it's not like he was this big rugby star."

In the style of Jen and Brad, they met through his agent, whom Una knew. "I got a call asking if I was interested in going on a date with this rugby player that liked me. I was single at the time and it was quite out of the blue. I didn't take it that seriously, was kind of going, 'Ah, sure, I might as well.'"

She seems annoyed at the idea that it was a manufactured set up, and is at pains to make clear that Ben and his agent are mates. "They were sitting down having a lads' chat and he was like, 'Oooh, who do you fancy these days?' And Ben had spotted me on something , and he really liked me. And his agent was like, 'Oooh, I might be able to do something there,'" she remembers.

"He thought nothing of it, he thought, 'As if you're going to be able to set me up with her.' And the next thing, two or three days later, his agent goes, 'There you go, there's her number'.

"And Ben was like, 'God, I really didn't think you were going to go and ask her.' At the time I was the only single one, so in every interview it was like, 'So you're the single one, so you're the single one, so you're the single one.'"

She checked Ben out online before the first date, and "really fancied him. I googled him and had a look, and I really fancied his pictures, and then we exchanged numbers and he gave me a call."

Their first date was low-key; he called over and they went for a drink. "I knew that we'd click, 'cause we'd loads of phone conversations before we actually met. And from the first moment I actually saw him I was like, 'Phwoar'," she says, making a noise somewhere between endearment and attraction. "He just was lovely. Really warm personality. And we just clicked and hit it off."

She bridles at any suggestion that she is a Wag. "No, not at all, definitely, definitely not," she says, taking on emphatic, pointed tones. "I work so hard and I make all my own money.

"It doesn't annoy me," she continues. "It doesn't offend me because I know I'm not a Wag. Wag is a little bit of a derogatory word for someone who feeds off her boyfriend's money and success and stuff. Whereas I do my own thing. The football players are more bling-bling than the rugby players. It's a bit more showbiz, the football; you know, the rugby's more down-to-earth. That's what I love about it."

Una and Ben moved into their north London home after only two months of dating. "We moved in really quickly. I didn't have a car at the time and he was driving from Northampton to London which is, like, a really long journey. And I just said to him, 'God, I wonder what're we going to do if we ever want to live together.' And he was like, 'Why don't we just do it?'" she says, laughing fondly at the memory.

"I was like, 'I wasn't really thinking that it was going to be happening straight away.' But when I saw how much he was travelling over and back I just kind of thought, 'Yeah, let's do it.' It felt right. We just jumped straight in.

"He's really positive," she says smilingly of

her other half. "He's the laid-back one and I'm the one who gives him the little push that he needs sometimes; he even says, 'I like that you've, like, a little bit more get up and go'. He'd sit down and never get up. Well, obviously he's working out all the time but he loves to come back and chill out and do absolutely nothing.

"We have a very normal lifestyle outside of what we do. We just watch TV, go to the cinema. We eat out a lot. Not like fancy restaurants. Just low-key. Because I never have time to go and buy anything to stock up. So we just end up going for local pub grub. He comes off the pitch and comes home to me, and I come away from everything and just chill out with him."

Chilling out includes the occasional musical duet -- google Ben Foden and the second entry is a YouTube video posted by the two -- Benuna, as she laughingly describes them -- giving an earnest acoustic rendition of The Saturdays hit Ego. As a 12-year-old, Ben was in a boy band; Anonymous. He auditioned for Pop Idol in 2004, which gained him the nickname 'Pop Idol' among his fellow rugby players.

Two days after we meet, Ben is due home from Australia. The month apart has been their longest separation and she is hugely excited at his imminent return. "I can't wait to see him. It has been tough."

They're heading to Ibiza the weekend after we meet, for their first holiday together. "I'm in for such a treat, 'cause I have him all to myself," she says, hugging herself at the thought of it. "We've a big night in one of those clubs planned for Saturday night, so I'll start off the holiday with a bang, and then I'll chill out for the rest of it. I want to relax. Sunbathe. Shop. Eat."

Do they have any plans for marriage? "Really early on we were always like, 'I feel like I've met the one,'" she says. "But you know what? You never know, you just never know. And I'm really, really happy with how it is now and I love him being my boyfriend and I love him living with me. And you know, if that is the next step further down the line, that will eventually happen. But there's no talks about marrying now. We just say how happy we are together. And I'll be surprised if he ever asks me, whenever he does. I think that's the best way for it to be."

Her musical identity -- both as songwriter and singer, is clearly a point of pride. She's had one-on-one songwriting sessions with Guy Chambers, best known for his long partnership with Robbie Williams in the good old days, and was recently included in a writers' project organised by Gary Barlow.

"I've such a passion for writing, it has really rubbed off on the other girls and they're all getting really into it now," says Una. "We like the writing to come from all of us, rather than just one of us, and even if one girl might only just put in a word, it's still a co-write."

Does she see a solo career in the future? "Maybe, I mean I'd never say never. I never think about it, all I think about now is The Saturdays. We're only two years out on the road; we've got a good few years left before I'd be thinking of going solo. I've no desire for that right now."

An awareness seems to inform Una's every move of how good she's got it. Even at our post-interview photo shoot, clearly exhausted and barely able to muster the will to chat, she is still completely accommodating; happy to undergo the ministrations of hair, make-up and styling, immediately agreeing to stay on for one extra shot when asked. She's quiet, withdrawn, but never cranky or rude.

When it's time to go, there's a big hullaballoo as various PRs, marketing people and minders make their goodbyes. Almost unnoticed, Una stands quietly in the background, head bowed, arms tightly wrapped around herself, draped in a coat and wearing pristine hotel slippers. Obviously exhausted, she nevertheless waits patiently until everyone has said their piece. As they move out, she's almost swamped by her noisy entourage. With a quiet smile, she's gone, in search of her dinner.

L

The Diet Coke 'Love it Light Roadshow' is a style-and-pamper tour of Ireland in a custom-built 1965 Airstream, 'The Silver Palace', with pampering treatments from Rimmel London and Sally Hansen, and styling by Laura Cunningham. The roadshow will make 79 stops throughout Ireland, finishing up in Belfast for Belfast Fashion Week in October. To join the Diet Coke 'Love it Light Roadshow' log on to www.facebook.com/dietcoke

Susan Hunter, 13 Westbury Mall, Grafton St, D2, tel: (01) 679-1271

Bow Boutique, Ground Floor, Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, 59 Sth William St, D2, tel: (01) 707-1763

Miss Fantasia, 25 Sth William St, D2, tel: (01) 671-3734

Photography by Lili Forberg

Assisted by Dee Poole and Lauren White

Styling by Liadan Hynes

Assisted by Dearbhla Neenan and Micaela Cullen

Make-up by Seana Long, Make Up For Ever, 38 Clarendon St, D2, tel: (01) 679-9043

Hair by Trevor Hynes, Peter Mark, 74 Grafton St, D2, tel: (01) 671-4399

- Liadan Hynes

Originally published in

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