“Shawry…” slurs Ronan Keating in Boyzone’s ode to forgiveness, Baby Can I Hold You. What he means is ’sorry’, but when it comes to Keating’s irritating fake singing voice, you’d be forgiven for mis-hearing.

Anyway, that Boyzone reunion mustn’t be meeting the same levels of success as their arch-rivals Take That, because I read today that they’re apologising for starting a ruck in Dublin during the 2000 MTV Music Awards.

You remember the incident? Shane ‘Eyebrows’ Lynch decided to square up to Sean ‘Puff ‘P.Diddy’ Daddy’ Combs, after one too many shandies. Apparently, they recently told the Daily Star:

We’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to the channel. As a band we are really keen to bury the hatchet. Back in those days, Shane thought if we went prepared we wouldn’t win anything. He’d had more than a few pints to calm his nerves. Because he was drunk he ended up effing and blinding on stage and later had a fight with P Diddy and proper slapped him on the head. That wasn’t very representative of the band. He didn’t show any respect and is very sorry.

I notice no apologies for Ronan Keating’s solo career were made, surely the biggest insult to the fans. In some ways, it’s like the time they made Tony Blair get up and apologise for atrocities during the World War – no-one can quite understand why the apology is being made now, and what difference is it going to make anyway?

My own suspicion is that Boyzone’s awfully dull comeback single isn’t performing to expectations and they’re kissing up to MTV for a bit more screen time. Which shows how out of touch they are, considering the channel hasn’t properly shown music videos since the turn of the Millennium or something.