The Script frontman recalls ‘hammering’ whiskey on flight before becoming sober

The Script frontman Danny O’Donoghue has said before he gave up alcohol, in a low moment, he “hammered” whiskeys on a short flight.

The Irish singer said he had intended to go “stone cold sober” for the whole of Christmas, after the death of his 46-year-old bandmate Mark Sheehan in 2023.

However, he revealed that once he had returned to Dublin from the UK for the festive period he immediately started drinking.

The 43-year-old told the How To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast: “By the time I’d got off the plane, I was smashed. With every intention to get on that plane saying, I’m not going to drink at all and then while I was on it, whiskey please.

“Bang, and then I just hammered the whiskeys, got home and I pretty much spent Christmas just pissed.

“I do one thing on Christmas Day, have been doing it for 14 years now, where I attend Temple Street children’s hospital from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon and spend time with the kids and nurses.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful morning. I wasn’t drunk Christmas Eve. After the hospital I just went straight out to my sister’s, had dinner, straight on the Guinness again and I went like, the 25th, 26th, 27th drunk, the whole time.

“The 27th I said if I stay in Dublin much longer it will be so bad for me, so I cut it short and went home to the UK where I have my studio, and where my girlfriend lives.

“I said that’s it, that’s it, I’m finished. I’m finished drinking, I’m finished smoking, everything from December 27.

“I gave up everything that day and I, for the first time, was able to legitimately say there’s another guy in here who’s f****** hijacking me.

“Then, also on top of that, I bit the bullet and went back to church.”

He added that he had struggled with substance abuse since school.

O’Donoghue added: “I was very experimental as a kid, as you would be as a musician.

“I’d go sober for a few years and then have a few drinks, this, that and the other, so I was always dabbling, never to the extent where it’s gotten too out of hand where I’ve had to go anywhere.

“I don’t have any different stories to anyone else growing up from my time in Dublin, and that’s the mad part.”

O’Donoghue began his career in the Irish boyband Mytown, alongside Sheehan, before launching pop group The Script with him in 2008.

The band achieved four UK number one singles and seven top 10 albums.

The singer said he had failed music in school, but had later realised why when he was diagnosed as dyslexic as an adult.

He said: “I failed music and it was shocking for me, because I went to the school for that.

“I’d prided myself on it. I was so nonchalant sitting in the back of the class like I can do whatever I want, and it was clear that I couldn’t.

“I left in the fourth year because I wasn’t getting on well in the school and my mum just thought, let’s go for a change.

“We went to another place where there were less rules, no uniforms, you could smoke, not in class but outside.

“There were a lot less rules which I think suited me. I went there, and I spent a year there. It kind of just got a little worse for me.

“I was OK, I got pretty decent marks, but I just wasn’t interested in school and the music bug had caught me big time.

“The reason why I failed all of those things is because I’m dyslexic.”