Westlife have been sent plenty of weird and wonderful gifts by their fans over the years – but one particularly disgusting item still haunts Nicky Byrne .

The singer told Dublin Live about the horrible moment the band were given a box of USED tampons as he sat down for an exclusive chat backstage at Dublin’s Croke Park.

Looking back on the last 20 years of the band’s career, he told us about some of the strangest things fans had sent them.

The 40-year-old said: “We got a delivery of a turnip one time. We didn’t eat it. We wondered why and I remember once saying in an interview that Mark had toes like turnips and I think that’s why it was sent.

“There was also a weighing scale sent to us one time and we never knew whether that was because we were too fat or too skinny, we didn’t know, we couldn’t work out what they were trying to tell us about our weight.”

Nicky, who is travelling with his band on their Twenty Tour, added: “We were in Argentina one night and it was chaotic outside the hotel with thousands of people and we were bundled into a van and as the doors were closing a fan threw something into the van in a plastic bag.

“People used to chuck cuddly toys into the van with little notes attached to them and sometimes bras and knickers and everything else you can imagine.

“But this time I opened the bag and I saw a box of Tampax. But the strange thing was, I distinctively remember that the box didn’t look brand new, it looked a bit creased like they’d sat on it or stood on it, so we were afraid to touch it. We opened it and there were used tampons in the box.

Markus Feehily, Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, and Kian Egan of Westlife (Image: Liam McBurney/PA Wire)

Bandmate Kian Egan also recalled the turnip as he looked back on his career, but he said he and the lads also had some “scary” and “creepy” moments when fans went to extremes in a bid to meet them.

The 39-year-old told us: “I’ve had a few scary moments where I’ve got out of my car outside my house at two in the morning and there’s somebody right there in your face.

“On this tour at the start we had people following us and hiding in the bushes at dance rehearsals.

“There were a few incidents where a fan hid in Shane or Mark’s room and popped out after about three hours of them sitting there and watching TV. There’s been some creepy stuff in the early years, it’s not like that nowadays.”

The band, which also stars Shane Filan and Mark Feehily, made a triumphant return to Croke Park last night, playing to a crowd of 85,000 adoring fans.

They also celebrated Shane’s 40th birthday and their new single Dynamite going to No1 in the iTunes chart in Ireland.