IN the Nineties, pop star Kavana had dreams of becoming the next big superstar in music.
But the I Can Make You Feel Good singer had a dramatic fall from grace when he was unable to curb his booze addiction and keep a lid on his drug-taking.
He was also forced to hide his homosexuality over fears his female fans would desert him.
Now 47 and finally sober, Kavana — real name Anthony Kavanagh — has documented his journey from the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party to the Woolworths bargain bin in a new autobiography.
And he leaves no stone unturned.
From his unexpected friendship with Amy Winehouse to having a lifetime ban from Loose Women for being drunk on air, it’s all in Pop Scars — a memoir of fame, addiction and the dark side of Nineties pop.
Kavana says: “If only people knew this happy-go-lucky pop star who sings about making them feel good, actually feels the complete opposite.”
The Manchester-born singer burst on to the scene, partying with the Spice Girls, Steps, Peter Andre and Boyzone among others.
Other than a brief stint at McDonald’s — where he was fired for stealing a Filet-O-Fish — being a pop star was the only job he’d had.
And he had all the credentials for it — good looks, a great voice and an impeccably groomed curtains hairdo.
Kavana was signed to a record label in his teens, learning the ropes as a tea boy, before finally landing a deal.
He was soon joining Boyzone on the Smash Hits tour and it wasn’t long before he realised the Guinness-drinking Irish boys were lightweight partiers compared to him.
At one point, Ronan Keating had to tell him his nose had started bleeding during a post-gig booze-up, sparking a mad dash to the toilets.
Kavana recalls in his memoir: “The taste of metal and cocaine and possibly baby powder drips down my throat. I’ve overdone it again. I simply don’t know when to stop lately.
‘Greedy cocaine mouse’
“When others decide they’ve had enough and want to call it a night I go back to my room and feel the need to carry on.
“I saw a documentary on lab mice being fed the stuff once and they kept going back for more. Little scurrying mice, all jittery and riddled with nerves.
“Tiny claws scratching against the ground. That’s me. A greedy cocaine mouse. I splash my face with water and wipe any remnants of blood away from my nose.
“I wet a bit of toilet paper, roll it into a ball and put it up the nostril, stuffing it just far up enough to stop the drip and leave it lodged in.
“I’ll have to make do with breathing out of one nostril for now. Charming.”
Having a cocaine-induced nose bleed in front of Ronan wasn’t a good look, especially as he and Ronan’s bandmate Stephen Gately — affectionately known as “Steo” — had eyes for each other.
But it would lead to a sweet romance.
He writes: “I’ve still got the ball of tissue shoved up my nostril but I have somehow forgotten about what happened pre-Steo arriving and am feeling calm and relaxed.
“‘I think I’ll call it a night, lads,’ says Ronan, with a genuine yawn. I’m not tired and it’s nothing to do with the drugs that have by now thankfully worn off and been replaced with the tranquilising effects of the alcohol and Stephen’s presence.
"I’d normally be shy and nervous around someone I fancied but it wasn’t like that with him. ‘It’s late. I’ll probably go to bed too,’ says Stephen, making me wonder if our deep connection is all in my head.
“I say nothing and leave the bar with the others. All three of us get in the lift. Ronan’s room is on the same floor as Stephen’s and without saying a word I get out with them on their floor, despite my own room being two floors up. I’ve no idea what I’m doing but my feet keep moving towards wherever Stephen is going, while Ronan walks ahead.
“I don’t want the night to end and I’ve never been so determined for it not to. Stephen keeps talking while we walk towards his room, almost like it’s some unspoken agreement we want to be alone together.
“ ‘Goodnight, lads,’ says Ronan, which feels like his way of saying, ‘It’s OK with me’.
“Hugs all round and it’s finally just me and Stephen standing outside his room. He puts his key card in the door and we go in.
“I don’t sleep in my hotel-room bed that night, and I get a glimpse of what innocent, real, genuine connection with another feels like.”
The taste of metal and cocaine and possibly baby powder drips down my throat. I’ve overdone it again. I simply don’t know when to stop lately
Such was his desire to hit the hard stuff, Kavana moved away from socialising with pop stars in favour of trendier company at London’s notorious Nineties hotspot the Met Bar, populated by the Cool Britannia crowd.
But he says: “There’s only so many parties or nights out at the Met Bar one can have without feeling like your soul is being sucked out, along with your wallet.
“A night out for me could end up going a multitude of ways depending on the company I keep, and lately I seem to be drawn to those who lean towards the non-stop partying type of evening, which are usually dressed up to begin with as, ‘Let’s have dinner at Nobu’.
“I don’t even like sushi, but sitting in a restaurant a few feet away from one of the Gallaghers or Kate Moss, in the desperate hope I also get invited to the inner sanctum of Cool Britannia does wonders for the ego.
“Not so much when you’re back in your hotel room watching the ceiling with the birds tweeting, with a paranoid coked-up empty soul and wallet to go with it.
“Maybe one day I will get invited to Supernova Heights [Noel’s former home in Camden] once I become pals with them. I just need to prove that there’s more to me than what they think. Plus, I am also a northerner so surely we would get on like a house on fire, hopefully in Noel’s £5million one in Belsize Park.”
By this point Kavana’s hits were drying up. In fact, new stars were pushing him down the pecking order when it came to bagging the cover of Smash Hits or Big magazine.
‘Ecstasy in hot tubs’
So he tried his luck in Los Angeles as a songwriter, a move made more tempting by the fact he could go under the radar over there.
This led to more drink and drugs and returning loaded with tales to tell his mates in Manchester.
He recalls leaving his pals “open-mouthed” by his “Hollywood escapades”, including “partying at the Playboy mansion where I did too much coke and had to be hosed down in a gold shower room by one of Mr Hefner’s Playboy bunnies . . . or the wild parties I get invited to in the Hollywood Hills at movie producers’ houses, necking ecstasy in hot tubs with A-listers and their hangers-on.
"What I don’t report back, though, is how lonely I’m starting to feel and that I’m worried I may have made a mistake but am too caught up in the whirlwind of it all to come home.
“Or that when I’m not partying with whichever new group of Hollywood ‘friends’ I’ve met randomly in the VIP of my locals, The Standard or The Viper Room, I’m usually on a comedown, eating pizza while watching The Tonight Show and feeling sad that I’m nowhere near getting to be on there myself.”
It was in LA where his drugs and boozing hit new depths of despair.
He was lured on to crystal meth, and while staying with a sober pal in a booze-free house, he raided the bathroom cupboard and downed a bottle of Joop aftershave
He says: “Typically, it had to be the most pungent, campest of scents and the one you can smell a mile away. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. The purple bottle stares at me like it knows exactly what kind of desperate low I’ve now sunk to.
“Fingers shaking as I unscrew the cap, the sickly sweet scent hitting my nostrils.
“It’s disgusting, but I’m too far gone to care. I wait for a second, imagining how this would look in a movie: The tragic alcoholic downing aftershave in a posh LA bathroom.
“I laugh at my reflection, what a joke — except the punchline is my life.
“The taste is beyond description, like someone’s melted a plastic Christmas tree with battery acid and marzipan.
“Immediately I gag, my body repulsed against yet another foreign liquid, but I force it down.
“One gulp. Two. I can’t do a third. It burns all the way down to my stomach.”
Kavana returned to the UK in the hope of sparking a music comeback. He starred in ITV talent show Grease Is The Word (designed to find the next Danny Zuko for the West End version of Grease). This led to the disastrous Loose Women appearance where he was so intoxicated his agent was told afterwards he was “banned for life”.
There was also a stint in Panto in Milton Keynes in 2009, playing Prince Charming in Cinderella alongside TV favourites Anthea Turner and Bobby Davro.
He was supported by friend Amy Winehouse, who he had recently reacquainted with — plus two random women she had just met in a nearby KFC.
Unsurprisingly, the trio were kicked out by security during the second half of the show after numerous Amy outbursts, including “Oi, you two ugly sisters are bitches”.
He also appeared in Celebrity Big Brother in 2015.
But after Kavana’s dad passed away with cancer, he lived with his mum, who was battling dementia — a far cry from his old life in fancy London hotels when he was labelled pop’s next big thing.
Summing up his life at that point, he says: “I tell myself, blissfully unaware of the desperate reality, that’s it’s perfectly normal for a man my age with no job and an escalating drink problem to be secretly living in an old people’s sheltered housing complex with his mother.”
Much later, Kavana would tell a rehab group his final almighty binge “culminated in me smoking crack in a skip with a homeless lady who I bonded with then trusted with my Monzo card to go buy more drugs and who never returned.”
But by becoming sober, moving out and writing his new autobiography, it’s clear he has now turned a corner.
- Pop Scars by Anthony Kavanagh (Blink, £16.99) is out on Thursday.
