Andrea talks to the RTE Guide.

“I would like to marry somebody with the knowledge that if he’s not treating me right, or if he’s taking me for granted, I’ll leave,” Andrea Corr, who is in a loving, secure relationship, tells Paddy Kehoe. Photos Barry McCall.

Down The Factory I find myself, on Dublin’s Barrow Street, where the Corrs are currently working on the early arrangements for a new album. The band haven’t arrived yet, but nice yummy things for lunch await them, vacuum-packed green olives and cheese. Also on the table, there’s an impressive juicing machine, which will be fed with strawberries and pineapples and pears as the day goes on. Bob, the band’s friendly ‘teccy,’ (instruments technician) from Cork pours myself and himself a creamy beaker each and he tells me that The Corrs all have juicers in their homes.

I’m hovering in the hallway when a diminutive figure rushes in, apologising for lateness. No matter how many times you see Andrea Corr, you’re surprised afresh by the slightness of the singer and actress who turns 31 in May. Today, she has that familiar homely, prairie look, there’s a sort of gypsy cut to the dress she wears. She gives me a warm, yet mildly hesitant, handshake, and a look that could be described in much the same terms. Then she moves speedily to the next room where we sit down.

She looks directly at me as she speaks, a stray curl occasionally falling down her cheek. Sometimes she talks at length, sometimes not. The latter is an endearing trait, because interviewers hate listening to waffle, but also a faintly frustrating trait, because you want to know more. I mention her actor boyfriend Shaun Evans, whom she met two years ago on the set of the forthcoming coming-of-age comedy movie The Boys from County Clare. They had a kissing scene at the end. Were they already fancying each other then?

“I suppose we were, the job wasn’t very tough,” she laughs, getting all coy. She lives in Ballsbridge, he’s based in London. “I kind of get a little private about all this, to be honest,” she says, when I ask her to describe him. “He’s very artistic, he’s very adventurous about life and the world, he’s very spirited. It’s probably like anybody else: you meet somebody and you hear what they say, and you go ‘wow! that’s kinda what I think.’ There was something he said which I thought was quite different for a guy to say. It was something to do with nature: I remember looking at my friend, ’cos she heard it, it just kind of rang true to the way I look at life.”

Another woman might want a guy to be utterly different from her, I suggest. He might say something mysterious that didn’t actually chime with her and that could be the very thing that made him more attractive. “Years ago when I was in my teens, you’d fancy guys who didn’t speak very much. You’d think that was terribly interesting, but really the guy had nothing to say. That’s what you learn as life goes on. I suppose that mystery you’re talking about is more to do with teens than reality, and about your illusions about somebody, rather than the truth about them. To me, you’ve got to be able to share interests. What works for me is that we do love, and are passionate about the same things.” I gather they go to plays and films together. He is taller – surprise, surprise – and, yes, she likes the protective element of having a boyfriend.

Andrea wrote the lyrics to a song called Humdrum which featured on the last album, about the way people sometimes take each other for granted in marriages. “I would like to marry somebody with the knowledge that if he’s not treating me right, or he’s taking me for granted, I’ll leave – I don’t want to take somebody else for granted, either,” the singer says, adding: “I know that’s probably controversial on a Catholic level.” She likes the ‘steadiness’ of marriage. “I would like to say ‘that’s my husband’ or I’d like to have a next of kin, if something happens.”

Andrea’s mother, Jean, died at 57, in 1999, after suffering from a rare lung disease. While talking about her mother, she suddenly looks at her watch and notes that it’s her mam’s birthday today. Back in April 2002, when I spoke to her, emotions were more raw. She declared then: “You sometimes get a very dark moment where you feel, ‘oh my God, how have I lived without her, how have I laughed, how have I done this, how have I done everything? You feel quite guilty and shocked all over again. There is something that gets me about actually ‘going on’ – why haven’t I fallen apart?”

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