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Viewpoint from Shane Lynch 20/03/2015
 Shane Lynch
member of the Irish band Boyzone
Kicked out of school at the age of fourteen, Shane had no grand plan or burning ambitions. He just took life as it came, surviving on his boyish charm and gift of the blag. So when a friend asked him how he felt about forming a boy band he thought, ‘Sure, why not?’ He didn’t sing, he didn’t play an instrument, but, hey, so what? He’d make it up as he went along. He was a survivor
When the Boyzone phenomenon finally took off, Shane soon started to kick against the manic world he found himself hurled into. Relentless media pressure, a dangerous foray into the occult, his marriage breakdown and the eventual band break-up took their toll on a man who could never quite get to grips with what all the fuss was about
 The fame game is not all it’s cracked up to be as Shane explains, “I`d once been an ordinary rational human being but, bit by bit, I was changed into a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a hopeless, evil man. Anger churned around inside me almost all the time and I was weighed down under the influence of the things I had been messing around with. A lot of the time I`d thought I`d fallen into hell. There was nothing but blackness. I knew I was in deep trouble
Shane had already experimented with a homemade Ouija board when he was just 14 years old. It spelt out `Kill Shane` and left the boy shocked and terrified, and opened the door to many other unwelcome and frightening supernatural visitations. “Once I was staying in a hotel in Germany. I was in a very deep sleep when I was woken by the sound of footsteps padding across my room. They came up right behind me and I sensed someone or something leaning over me. I could hear breathing. I was so scared I couldn’t move or shout or scream. I remember the sound of the breathing stopping and the footsteps retreating and I`d never been so frightened in my whole life”
 Shane seemed to be under but a Christian singer called Ben Ofoedu helped him find the peace he was seeking by saying that it was possible to find real freedom through a personal relationship with God. Shane had achieved fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams – and ended up angry, disillusioned, empty and alone. Then when Ben told Shane about God, little by little, his new faith helped him put the shattered pieces of his life back together
Boyzone`s recent UK tour saw 200,000 tickets selling out within two hours, and Shane`s autobiography, The Chancer continues to sell well. As Shane says, “Since handing my life over to God, I know whatever happens, the future is in God`s hands. It’s no good looking to my hopes and dreams because I’ve learned that God always has something much, much better”
used by kind permission of Christians in Entertainment www.cieweb.org.uk
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