Kerry and Bryan McFadden talk to Now about the strength of their love
We won't let a lap dancer destroy our marriage

Westlife star Bryan has admitted to having oral sex with lap dancer Amy Barker on his stag night, but says the shame and guilt of it almost drove him to suicide.
When Atomic Kitten Kerry Katona first met Westlife's Bryan McFadden, people gave their romance two weeks at the most. Four years, one lavish wedding and two daughters later, they still appear to be madly in love, although in their short-lived marriage they've weathered storms that would have driven most couples apart.
'We've had two years of pain,' Kerry, 22, admits. She's referring to the scandal that rocked their relationship to its foundations, when in April last year lap dancer Amy Barker claimed that a drunken Bryan had sex with he on his stag night - and then paid her £15,000 'hush money' just weeks before he married Kerry.

Despite accepting the money, Barker sold her story to a Sunday newspaper and last week made fresh allegations against Bryan - namely that he took cocaine on that night - after announcing she was suing him and a magazine for denying they'd ever had sex.
'It was the straw that broke the camel's back', says Kerry of Barker's latest claims. 'This isn't about Bryan anymore. I'm not angry with him. I'm angry with this woman.'
Now Bryan, 23, and Kerry - who have kept their silence for months - have decided to answer back in an exclusive interview with Now.
'For so long, it's all been her doing the talking and we didn't want to keep having to answer back with bitchy comments,' says Bryan. 'But now she's said everything she can say.'

Sitting in the grounds of the luxury holiday villa they've rented in Marbella, Spain, the McFaddens have interrupted their precious holiday time - a rate break without Molly, two, and Lilly Sue, seven months - to put their side of the story. Kerry's in tears as she recounts the effect that the scandal has had on their marriage and how she first heard about it while she was thousands of miles away from home.
'I couldn't get hold of Bryan, so I rang my aunt. As soon as she picked up the phone, I knew. When she read the newspaper over the phone, I was screaming and crying. I thought: "My God, I don't believe this." I rang Bryan back and he wouldn't answer his phone, no one would.
'I called his manager Louis Walsh and screamed at him, but he didn't have a clue. I called Shane, Kian, everyone I could possibly think of. I was screaming down the phone: "You assholes. You knew all this and no one told me. You let me walk down the aisle like an idiot." I went ballistic.

'I finally got through to Bryan and he admitted a sex act had taken place during a lap dance, but no more. I just collapsed on the floor, shouting: "No, my Bryan wouldn't do that to me!"
'He knew about all the shit I'd been through growing up. He knew about the foster carers, the eight schools I'd been through. He knew everything about me. That's why I found it so hard to believe he'd do that with me.'
Kerry had a though upbringing and as a child she was in and out of care. She's never met her father, so although she admits to threatening Bryan with divorce in the heat of her fury, it was never really an option.

'It put us through a lot of pain, but I loved Bryan so much I didn't want it to be over. I don't want the sort of life my mum has had.
'Some of my mum's boyfriends used to beat the crap out of her and me - something Bryan's never ever done. He's never raised his hand to me. If he did, I'd cut his balls off.
'The shock was literally like someone had punched me in the chest. I dropped the phone and I remember my mum holding me down and his mum shoving two Valium tablets in my mouth. I was in a state. I even took my wedding ring off.'
Kerry was in the middle of filming her series Elimidate, but was given 24 hours' leave to fly from location in Las Vegas to Newcastle, where Bryan was on tour and in a similar - if not worse - state. Kerry admits: 'He was on 24-hour suicide watch. He just lost the plot.'
'After it came out,' says Bryan, 'for the first two days Kerry didn't know the truth. What she'd heard was the story in the paper. I feared she'd believed the whole story. It had obviously broken her heart and I thought she'd leave me. I thought that was it. Finished. I wanted to die and felt suicidal. I didn't want to be with me, never mind anyone else.'

Kerry gives him a lovely hug has he admits: 'There's no life for me without Kerry. When I heard her crying and heard how much I' hurt her, I was crying, too. I couldn't have imagined going on if she'd left me. I wouldn't have been here today.
I wouldn't have been in Westlife. I don't know what I'd have done. It really would have broken me.'

At first, Kerry couldn't bear to make love with Bryan and made him sleep on the floor. 'I didn't want him to touch me,' she admits. But now she's clearly forgiven her contrite husband for his drunken moment of madness.
Bryan says: 'I'm big enough to say I've made some stupid mistakes and I'll take them on the chin. I'm not a soft touch and my family deserves better. Sure, I allowed Amy Barker to give me oral sex on my stag night. I've made this clear in the past. And I was drinking, as she claimed. But this isn't an excuse. I knew enough to know what was going on, even if my guard was down.

'I did not, however, take any cocaine. I don't use cocaine, I've never used it and I'm strongly anti-drugs, as everyone knows. Nor did I put any pressure on her to do anything. Nor did we have, or attempt to have, intercourse. Afterwards, she threatened to sell her story to papers unless I paid her money. Foolishly I went along with this and, having taken the money, Miss Barker went to the papers anyway and no doubt received even more money.

'I don't want to have a slanging match in the newspapers, so I'm not going to respond to everything that Miss Barker has said to the press. In due course, the truth will become clear and I'm happy to leave this in the hands of the jury.'
Bryan intends to counter-sue Amy Barker and says that he can prove 100 per cent that he's never taken cocaine - including on that night. Is he willing to be tested? 'I don't even have to do that because every time we do a tour we have to apply for tour insurance and to get that you have to do a medical,' he says. 'We did that two weeks after my stag night, so they'll have all the results - including the drugs test. I've got proof.'

Bryan, however, does admit to drinking large amounts of alcohol on the night. 'Of course I'd been drinking. It was my stag night. The worst part of it all - was that when she first got on the bus the lads sniggered. We didn't think she was really a lap dancer because she looked in her forties.'
Kerry quips: 'I said afterwards: "You could have at least picked someone a lot prettier." She was no Britney Spears.'
Bryan turns serious: 'I don't want to belittle what I've done, but if you take the scale of what happened compared to what we've been suffering since I mean, if I'd had an affair, we'd been seeing each other and she'd sold the story, well, I'd be in the wrong and I'd hold my hand up. It was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life.
"Knowing Kerry so well, I don't think she was hurt so much by what I did, but because our relationship was so perfect until then. That innocence has gone because of that hiccup.'

Kerry says having it splashed across the papers was humiliating: 'What annoys me about this woman is that she has two kids, I had a daughter, I'd never met her or done anything wrong to her, then she goes to the papers. I'd rather not have know. I'm glad in a way that I do, though, because it's made us stronger. It's put us through a lot of shit.

'It's been a nightmare for both of us and it did affect our marriage. Before, I'd been so laid back and trusting, but I told Bryan I'd never trust him again. I've always been an insecure person because I had so many grown-ups reject me and not want me. But compared to what I went through with my mum and her boyfriends, this was worse because I'd never loved anyone as much as I love Bryan and I don't think I ever could.

'I don't want sympathy. I just want it all be forgotten and to get on with my life with Bryan. I don't want to be a divorcée. I don't want my kids just seeing their dad at weekends. A happy family is more important to me than having shedloads of money and being famous or having nice clothes.
'Bryan and I are 100 per cent together - more than ever. I'd die without him. He's my life. Don't get us wrong, we still have silly rows like any other married couple - like when he doesn't but his washing in the basket - but we're happy.'
Bryan adds: 'This woman can go on for the rest of her life, but no matter what she thinks or tries or do, she's not going to split us up. She's not going to ruin our lives. Our love is far too strong.'

'We're soul mates, aren't we?' Kerry asks. Bryan nods: 'Forever. Nothing's ever going to break us up. Our love's gonna last.'
'Kerry thought I didn't find her attractive anymore,' Bryan confides. 'That's rubbish'

Paula Jones

Max Clifford's inside view

Celebrity PR guru Max Clifford was approached by Spearmint Rhino lap dancer Amy Barker last year.
'She came to me with her story, so I spoke to Bryan McFadden and his management and she agreed to sign a confidentiality contract,' he recalls. 'She was paid £15.000, but later went back on this agreement and sold her story to a newspaper.
'She'd have been paid for that as well, so she's made an awful lot of money - probably £25,000-£30,000 - out of Bryan McFadden and a 30-second blow job when he was drunk.'

Max says that celebrities also face being caught in honey traps by girls deliberately planning to bed a star and sell their story.
'I get calls to my office form girls asking: "If were to go with one of the Manchester United football players, who would we get the most money for?"
'More and more young women have realised that there's a lot of money to be made from having sexual relationships with stars. It started as a trickle, became more frequent and is now an absolute flood. These girls don't fancy the celebrities - they just fancy a big cheque.

'The amazing thing is that some of the girls are teachers or at medical school. They're not little tarts who just sleep around anyway, but sometimes they think it gives them a certain amount of prestige with their mates.
'It's a horrible sign of our times, but it's all about supply and demand - the British public won't get bored of reading these kiss'n'tells. They love it.'

The lap dancer's story

Lap dancer Amy Barker, 29, from Westfield, Yorkshire, has issued a libel writ against publishers Emap and Bryan McFadden. She's going to court to prove the Westlife star destroyed her reputation.
This follows revealations by mother-of-two Amy in The Sunday People in which she claimed Bryan barged uninvited into her hotel room on his stag night, just weeks before his marriage to Atomic Kitten Kerry Katona, and that she was pressured into having sex with him.

Within weeks, Bryan married Kerry in a fairytale ceremony in County Meath, Ireland.
But Amy then broke a contract in which she'd agreed not to speak out about Bryan because she said she wanted to expose his hypocrisy.
She launched her libel battle when he told a magazine that her claims were 'rubbish'.

Asked by the magazine if Amy's version of events were accurate, Bryan said: 'No. It was like I was watching a different world.' He denied having sex with Amy, insisting: 'If it were true, the Westlife boys would never speak to me again.'
Amy claims in her writ that Bryan's public insistence that it never happened destroyed her reputation and made her out to be a liar. Her writ alleges that after she performed lap dances for the star on the stag party coach, he became 'assertive and overbearing', boasting that 'in Ireland we are gods' and consuming alcohol and cocaine.

She 'reluctantly' had sex with him when he turned up 'unannounced an uninvited' at her hotel room. Amy alleges that Bryan later 'apologised for his behaviour, expressing concern that his behaviour might become public knowledge.'
Amy claims that the magazine article suggests she 'maliciously invented' the fact that Bryan had sex with her on his stag night.

A Westlife spokesman said: 'We deny all the allegations and we'll defend any action made against Bryan McFadden.'

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