Ronan Keating finds teddy bears 'comforting'

Ronan Keating finds hugging a teddy bear “comforting”.

The ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’ hitmaker can understand why young children find “magic” in snuggling up to a stuffed toy and he enjoys it when his four-year-old son Cooper gives him some of his favourites when he goes to tuck the youngster into bed.

Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher while hugging a Captain America teddy, he said: “There’s something incredibly satisfying but also comforting – my little boy Cooper who’s four sleeps with a teddy, and if I climb in beside him in bed, he’ll say ‘here daddy’ and give me his teddy or another teddy.

“And to just be lying there with a teddy in your arms is incredibly comforting, and there’s a reason why we do it when we are three, four, five, six and seven years of age – and then we forget somewhere along the way – the magic in that and it’s gorgeous. So here I am loving Captain America.”

The 45-year-old singer – who has Cooper and Coco, two, with wife Storm, and Jack, 23, Missy, 21, and Ali, 16, with ex-wife Yvonne – loves going on holiday because he can truly rest and relax in a way he never usually does.

Speaking on the Walt Disney Travel Company’s ‘Journey to the Magic’ podcast, he said: “[Going on holiday] has to be the greatest feeling – you really stop. Because as a parent you don’t stop. From the moment you get up, whether they are in school or not. There are concerns on your mind, you’re worried are they doing OK, are they having a good day, all of these things.

“I haven’t had a night’s sleep in 23 years since my first child was born. You just don’t ever sleep the same again. So, when you go on a holiday you know the kids are happy and having the time of their life, it’s like your shoulders drop and you just relax, and you stop for a minute. And I guess that’s why holidays are so important and you don’t want the holiday to end.”

The former Boyzone singer has very “different” holidays now with his older kids and his younger family.

He said: “My three eldest, for my birthday they got me a trip to Paris with them. So, we’re taking a trip to Paris we’re going to just have a weekend of food and hanging out together. And that’s just going to be amazing.

“With the younger ones then, we went to this lovely place called Jumby Bay in Antigua, and there were bikes on the island, all the little kids were riding their bikes and Coco was in her chair on my bike. So, we just cycled around the island and that was a really lovely experience.

“It’s very much you know villa to beach and that’s all we did. That was lovely but that was focused totally on the little ones. So yeah, there’s two different kinds of holidays really, with the older and the younger.”

New episodes of ‘Journey to the Magic’ are released on Wednesdays from wherever you listen to your podcasts.