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Westlife World Column

Sunday World Newspaper December 17th 2000

Fingers crossed for the Christmas No.1

Hi Shane here,

IT'S been another crazy week in the life of Westlife as we hopped around Europe and the UK promoting our Christmas single, What Makes A Man/My Girl.

For a change, we actually travelled by TRAIN this week.

It's normally cars and planes, but we took the Eurostar train from London to Paris and it was really cool.

It's been at least two years since I've been on a train and it was weird, but nice, to be back on one again. The trip from London to Paris is fantastic, You don't notice the journey at all because it's a really smooth trip. It travels at around 180 miles per hour and takes about two-and-a-half hours - sure it takes two hours to travel from Dublin to Sligo!

Anyway, once we got to Paris we were like little kids again as we were recording s show in EuroDisney. Boys being boys, we couldn't wait to try out all the rides and attractions. It was our first time there and we had a day to remember. It was a fun-packed experience. Mickey Mouse was running around the place, so it doesn't get much better than that!

On Thursday we headed back to London to record our spot on Top Of The Pops, where we performed our Christmas single. We're facing a very nervous week here in the Westlife camp as we wait on the news of the Christmas number one.

You never know what is going to happen with a Christmas single because its such a competitive time of the year and there are always lots of novelty singles around. This time we're up against, would you believe, Bob The Builder. He's doing really well.

Bob The Builder is a cartoon, gimmicky song and it's one of those singles that could really pull off a surprise by going to number one. I really do think we're going to have a hard job getting to Number One this time. Hopefully our fans will get us there.

LAST weekend was an amazing one for us, scooping the Record of the Year award for My Love and SIX Smash Hits Awards.

Now, I know that there are many people out there who think that the guys in Westlife don't get excited about awards anymore, but that's far from the reality. You should have seen us last Saturday and Sunday, it was like Christmas morning to us.

For the record, this is what we won: Best Band On The Planet, Best Non-British Band, Best Single (My Love), Best Album (Coast To Coast), Most Fancied Male (Shane Filan), Best Haircut (Kian Egan).

It was also a great honour for us to be invited to perform at this week's Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony with Bon Jovi. It was particularly exciting for Kian as he's a huge Bon Jovi fan and got to hang out with his heroes. To our surprise, they knew all our songs; and they told us how much they love Ireland.

Now it's fingers crossed for the Christmas number one - there'll be no nails left by the end of the week!