Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction

There are times when I would like to go home and just be normal and see my mates again and go to all of the old places. I enjoy spoiling my family, and there are times when I would love to treat my friends as well, and I know that my true friends won’t think anything of it. I’m not just talking about money. It’s also nice to be able to help people in other ways. For instance, my friend Ben is really talented musically and wanted to get some work experience, so I managed to get him some on the tour and he loved it. I would never have had the opportunity to do something like that before, but I’ll help my mates out in any way that I can.

I’m trying my best to stay as down to earth as possible, so I don’t want people doing things for me that I could do myself. Sometimes people think they should get me a bottle of water or some lunch, but I’m capable of picking up my own water, so why should they have to do it? It’s nice that people offer, and I understand that if we’re really busy and we don’t have time to get lunch, or we’re rehearsing on stage and we can’t grab a drink, someone may get it for us, but if a bottle of water is in a fridge two feet away from me I can walk over and get it.

My mum would never let me get away with that sort of thing. If I was at home and I asked her to get me a drink she’d be like ‘You know where the glasses are.’ At the same time it’s funny when I go home now because I’m so used to doing everything myself, but my mum still likes to look after me in a lot of ways, so I feel like a proper kid again when I’m back with my family.

A lot of people say nice things about the band and we get a lot of praise. Obviously it’s lovely to hear and it always puts a smile on your face when someone tells you that you’re good at what you do, but I want to keep my feet on the ground as much as possible. I would never want to get big-headed. It’s such an unattractive trait and I can’t imagine myself ever being like that. I always want to be aware of staying true to myself.

I spent Christmas mainly at home with my family. That was the most important thing to me. That, and seeing my friends, which I managed to do a few times. Things had been so busy that all I wanted to do was have a break, watch TV and eat and sleep. I had such a nice time, doing the same family things we do every year.

One thing that was different was that some fans came to my house over Christmas, and it was so cold that I felt really bad about them being outside. I did go out and see them as much as possible if I was there, but I felt terrible that they were standing in the freezing cold because of me. As a band we’ve always said that we’ll never complain about people coming to see us or wanting autographs or photos. They’re the reason we’re doing all of this.

We appreciate the support so much. It’s great to know that people like what we’re doing. Some days I read 100 great Twitter comments and there may be one from someone saying they don’t like me. If I’m having a bad day for some reason, that’s the one I remember and it can make me feel a bit down. Then I’ll go back and read the nice messages again and they’ll lift me. They mean a lot to all of us.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The New Year meant getting back to work, and we knew it was going to be busy. We had the tour coming up, so we had rehearsals for that, and we also had quite a lot of meetings and gigs, so things were pretty non-stop. But we’d all had a good break and we were ready to get back into it.

One of the first things we did was go to LA. When we got told we were going there my mouth literally fell open. I love going abroad but I’d never been to LA and had always wanted to. I’d seen and read so much about it, so I was looking forward to seeing how much of it was true.

LA is something else. Everyone you see looks like they’re famous, but I really liked it as a place. It was really hot there, so we were wearing shorts and t-shirts most of the time, and we got to chill out quite a bit as the hotel we stayed in, the W, had a pool.

What I found weird was that the people over there are so polite. When you get your breakfast brought to you in a hotel in England they’ll drop it off and barely say a word, but over there they’re so cheerful you want to invite them in to share it with you. This one woman who dropped off my food was like ‘Good morning, sir, how’s your day going? Where do you want me to put this good stuff?’ They literally couldn’t do enough for you.

We did some recording in this really cool complex where there were loads of different things going on. In one studio they were recording the backing vocals for Glee, and then Randy Jackson’s office was 100 metres away, so we went and met him and he was an amazing guy. He was so friendly.

We got some time off to go shopping too, so I literally raided Abercrombie and Fitch. Louis reckons I bought every single t-shirt they had in there, but I think he’s exaggerating. I did get quite a few, though …

I wish we’d had more time in LA, but we did really enjoy the five days we spent there. It was like I expected it to be, with the sun and the glamorous people, and it’s definitely somewhere I’d like to go back to. I really want to go to Venice Beach and see what that’s like.

We were all quite tired when we landed back in London, but we were soon woken up by the sight of hundreds of fans. It’s become a bit of a legendary story now about us being mobbed and the police being called and everything. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life. We’d seen loads of fans at The X Factor, but usually they were either outside behind a gate or in the audience. And when we meet fans at hotels or outside gigs they’re usually in small groups. Well this was definitely not a small group!

I was really shocked by the whole experience of having to run through the crowd, but I made myself enjoy it instead of being scared of it, because I knew it was something special. When we were in the police van afterwards we all sat there going ‘What the hell?’ It was almost as if it hadn’t happened, it was so surreal, but looking back on it now it was an amazing moment.

When tour rehearsals came around we were well aware that we would have to work really hard. We wanted to put on an amazing show and we had a lot of new stuff to learn, including dance routines. We were taught things like how to put more energy into moving around, which is hard when you’re in an empty warehouse performing to no one.

We also had to practise putting talking bits in between songs, which also felt weird because we’d be talking to an audience of six crew members, and even they didn’t respond.

Getting to put everything we’d learnt into practice was the ultimate pay-off for all the hard work we’d done. I can’t even begin to describe what it was like when we all stood on the stage together for the first night of the tour in Birmingham. Looking out and seeing all the banners and hearing thousands of people shouting your name … It really doesn’t get much better than that. We’d performed on The X Factor and we’d done gigs, but nothing compared to this. I had to stand there for a moment just to take it all in, but as soon as we started singing we were off.

I think even that first arena performance in Birmingham was different to anything else we’d ever done in terms of how much energy we put into it and how much we moved around the stage. It felt almost natural being there, even though it was also completely and utterly surreal. There were several times when we all looked at each other and I could tell we were all thinking the same thing – ‘This is incredible!’

The rush you get being on stage in front of so many people is indescribable. I wish everyone could have that feeling. I can be so tired and feeling like I’m in a bad mood, then I get on stage and I feel amazing. I’m so hyped up when I come off stage that I shout a lot and jump around. There’s no feeling like it.

I loved the tour so much I never wanted it to stop. I didn’t even get homesick, because we were so busy we didn’t get time to think about it, but I actually felt really guilty about that. All in all we were pretty well behaved on the tour, but we had our moments, like the fruit fight. At least we didn’t throw any TVs out of windows or anything … but there’s still time.

The wrap party at the end of the tour was good, but we all felt sad saying goodbye to everyone. I was up until about five in the morning so I was a bit tired the next day, but we had a day off to chill out so it didn’t matter too much.

When the tour was over, Louis, his mate Stan, my friend Johnny and I all went off on a skiing holiday together. I’d never been skiing before and I was desperate to give it a go. We had a brilliant laugh in Courchevel and I’d love to go back again.

We worked really hard on the album to find the right songs. They needed to be perfect. We wanted our first single to be a big summer song. For instance, when the Black Eyed Peas single ‘I Gotta Feeling’ came out in 2009 it was the song of the summer. When everyone heard it, it reminded them of all the good times they’d had. We wanted our first single to be like that and be the song that everyone would remember.

The people we got to work with on the album were incredible. Steve Robson is very, very talented and has worked with James Morrison and Take That and all sorts of people. Working with RedOne and Rami was very cool too because they’re legendary. It feels so odd to be working in all of these studios that we would never have even dreamed of walking into before we were in the band. It was quite surreal.

Having our first book go to number one in the book charts was also pretty unbelievable. We were excited about it being out there and hoped that some fans would buy it, but we didn’t realise just how many would get it. It was a complete shock and really exciting. The fans that came along to the book signings were incredible. I got given a lot of turtles because I once said I liked them, and it’s so cool when people remember little things you’ve said and chat to you about them.

We’ve done so many brilliant things this year. Filming the documentary was an interesting experience, but we are used to the cameras now so we all felt pretty chilled out about it. Photo shoots are always cool too. Even though we’ve done them before, each time it feels like a new experience.

Going on the Alan Titchmarsh show was a good laugh, because it’s one of those shows that everyone has seen. And he was a really nice guy. That was the first proper TV thing we did after The X Factor, so it’s one that we’ll always remember.

LOOKING FORWARD

One of the surprising things about being in the band is how committed fans are to us. Some of them came to loads of dates on the tour. People still don’t expect you to recognise them, though. There was a girl who was in our hotel one day who had been on loads of the tour, and she was really shocked that we’d remembered her name and knew who she was – but of course we do. We remember people just like anyone else would, and it’s nice to have the chance to get to know them properly.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to the press attention. It still feels very strange when I pick up a newspaper and something has been written about me. It sometimes feels like I’m reading about someone else. But as long as people carry on writing nice things about us I don’t mind.

As a band, we’re having the absolute best time ever. We’ve become better friends than I could ever have imagined and it’s so nice to have four other lads to share this experience with. If ever one of us is down the others pick him up, and we’ve got really good at coming up with ideas and putting things into practice as a group. I think we’re going to get tighter and tighter as time goes on.

Out of all the things that we have coming up, what we’re most excited about is getting out on the One Direction tour. We can see a lot more of the fans and they can see us performing our songs. It’s down to us to show what we’re all about, and we’re looking forward to doing exactly that.

We’ve got a lot of big dreams. We want to have number ones, travel a lot, go back to America and have as much fun as possible. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

QUICKFIRE

DOB: 1/02/1994

STAR SIGN: Aquarius

favourite …

FILM: Love Actually, The Notebook, Titanic – there are so many (but I tell everyone it’s Fight Club)

BODY PART: My hands, because I’ve always been told that they’re soft

FOOD: I love sweetcorn

ALBUM: 21 by Adele

FRIEND: Louis Tomlinson

CELEBRITY LADY: Frankie Sandford

SHOP: Selfridges

DRINK: I’ve been trying to just drink water but I love apple juice

COLOUR: Orange

TV SHOW: Family Guy

AFTERSHAVE: Blue by Chanel

PERFUME: Alien by Thierry Mugler

COMPUTER GAME: Fifa

IPHONE APP: Texts From Last Night, where people send in texts that people have sent them when they’re drunk. My friend Ali and I send good ones to each and some of them are so funny

WAY TO SPEND A SUNDAY: Asleep or chilling out

DATE VENUE: Restaurant

COUNTRY: England

RESTAURANT: TGI Fridays

WAY TO RELAX: I love getting massages because I’ve always had a really bad back

MODE OF TRANSPORT: Dog sleigh

NIGHT OUT: Going for dinner with all of my mates

BAND: The Beatles, Queen

WHAT COLOUR IS YOUR DUVET COVER? Brown or pink and blue

WHAT KIND OF PANTS DO YOU WEAR? Boxer shorts. I like Calvin Klein

FIRST PET: A dog called Max

DO YOU LIKE YOUR OWN COMPANY OR OTHER PEOPLE’S? The company of people. I like being around friends and family

LAST BOOK YOU READ: Forever Young by One Direction

LAST FIVE THINGS YOU BOUGHT: A pair of shoes from Supra, an Adidas t-shirt from Selfridges, a Nandos, dinner at TGI Fridays and some toothpaste

WHAT TYPE OF GIRLS DO YOU LIKE? I don’t have a type, because with some girls I may not find them attractive immediately, but then I really get to like them because their personality is so attractive. I like someone I can have a conversation with, and I would always look for someone who could get on with my parents. It’s important to me that my family like her too.

LIAM PAYNE

KEEP ON RUNNING

I guess one of the strangest things I can tell you about my younger years is that I’ve only got one kidney because when I was born I was effectively dead. Weird, I know. The doctors couldn’t get any reaction from me, so I had to be brought round, and although it seemed like I was okay, there were underlying problems.

I was born three weeks early and I kept being ill. From the age of zero to four I was always in hospital having tests done but they couldn’t find out what was wrong. In the end they discovered that one of my kidneys wasn’t working properly, and because it hadn’t been discovered in time it had scarred, and the other one was working at 95 per cent of its capacity. It got to the stage when I had to have 32 injections in my arm in the morning and evening to try and make me better. I’ve still got both kidneys, but one doesn’t work, so I have to be careful not to drink too much, even water, and I have to keep myself as healthy as possible.

My first ever school was an infant school in Wolverhampton called Collingwood and I was a bit of a naughty boy. In fact, I was often called into the headmistress’s office in the first few days. I used to have water fights in the toilets and climb on the roof to get footballs back.

By the time I went to junior school I’d grown up a lot and I tried out for a lot of the school teams but I never got into any of them. Then one day I tried out for the cross-country running team and I came first in the race.

There was a guy who was running for Wolverhampton at the time and he was one of the best runners around, and I beat him, so everyone said that I cheated. The next week we ran the same race and I won again, and that’s how I found out I could run. From then on I was training all the time and getting up at six in the morning to run for miles. At the age of 12 they put me in the school’s under 18s team, so I was running against 18-year-old men and keeping up with them.

I joined Wolverhampton and Bilston running team, and for three of the five years I was the third best 1500 metres runner in my age group in the country, which was amazing.

I carried on being sporty in high school and I joined the basketball team, but some older kids picked on me because I had some really nice basketball clothes I’d bought in America. They decided that meant I thought a lot of myself, so they started bullying me. I was only 12 and they were a lot older, so I needed to find a way to defend myself. My sister had a boyfriend called Martin who used to box, so my parents suggested that I went along with him and learnt to defend myself.

It wasn’t the nicest gym in the world and you had to fight everyone regardless of age or size, so there I was, at 12 years old, fighting the 38-year-old trainer. I broke my nose, had a perforated eardrum and I was always coming home with a bruised, puffy face. But it gave me so much confidence. It was nerve-wracking at first, but I got pretty good over the next couple of years.

These older kids were still bullying me, to the point where once they chased me into the road. It all got too much so I stood up to them and ended up having a fight with one of them. Thankfully I won, but I nearly got kicked out of school for it, which obviously wasn’t ideal.

I was a bit of a mini businessman when I was young. I really look up to the guys on Dragon’s Den and I used to buy big boxes of sweets and sell them at school for a profit. I used to make about £50 a week and my dad was so proud of me. I never had any proper jobs because I was always busy doing singing gigs, so that’s how I used to make my money.

I was always singing karaoke when I was growing up. I used to get up anywhere and sing Robbie Williams songs. I did my first rendition of ‘Let Me Entertain You’ at a holiday camp when I was about six, and I didn’t stop from then on. I’ve done karaoke in America, Spain, Portugal – you name it.

I always loved singing and dancing. My sister Ruth and I were always singing in the car, and my mum says that even when I was a really young kid I used to dance around the living-room to Noddy. I also used to put my dad’s glasses on, clasp my hands behind my back and sing along to his Oasis CDs, pretending to be Liam Gallagher.

I’ve got two older sisters, Nicola and Ruth. I always got on really well with Ruth when we were growing up, but I guess because Nicola, being the eldest, was usually left in charge when my parents went out, I saw her as a figure of authority, so we used to bicker sometimes. Ruth and I are very alike in that we both like to sing and we don’t really drink or anything, whereas Nicola is more of a party girl.

In Year Nine I joined the school choir and we used to do loads of shows in front of audiences, which I guess got me quite used to it. We set a world record when we joined with loads of other schools and sang the same song in unison. It was the Bill Withers track ‘Lean on Me’ and it was great because I got one of the solo parts.

Apart from singing I liked science, and of course PE. My parents even suggested that I could go on to be a PE teacher. I was a big football fan and I used to play every lunchtime, rain or shine. I also used to go and watch West Bromwich Albion, and I remember running on to the pitch when we got promoted. It was a great moment.

Judging by photographs of me growing up, my hair has kind of come full circle. I had a big mushroom when I was a kid, then I had tramlines put in the side of my head and eyebrows like my sister’s boyfriend Martin. After that I shaved it all off to grade three, then I grew it long again, so it’s now similar to how it was when I was a kid. I keep thinking about shaving it all off again, because it would be so much easier to manage, but I’m a bit scared of doing it.

Clothes-wise I made a few mistakes here and there too. I used to wear this bright orange Umbro t-shirt and a special pair of shorts that I loved. I didn’t really have much of an interest in fashion generally, so when my first X Factor audition came around I had absolutely nothing nice to wear. My shoes had a hole in them and I borrowed a pair of Armani jeans from Martin. He’s a 34-inch waist and I’m a 28, so they were really belted in. I wore a large shirt and then I bought a £30 waistcoat, which was the only thing I spent money on. When I look back now I can’t believe I got away with it. I did three rounds of The X Factor with a hole in my shoe.

Despite my hair mistakes, I think I got away with it at school. I had a girlfriend called Charnelle in Reception, who used to send me love letters. I was also really proud of the fact that I went out with a girl who was in Year Six when I was in Year Four. She was one of my sister’s friends, and I thought I was really cool having an older girlfriend.

I really liked one girl called Emily and asked her out 22 times, but she always said no. Finally I sang to her and then she said she’d go out with me, but she dumped me the next day. My mates used to wind me up and pretend that girls liked me when they didn’t, so I’d ask them out and they’d say no, which was mortifying.

I had a few dating disasters along the way, with girls cheating on me, and one girl was the inspiration for me singing ‘Cry Me a River’ on The X Factor. That was my payback to her because she was unfaithful.

I’ve always preferred having girlfriends to just seeing people. I think it’s nice to have someone special. I was seeing a girl called Shannon while I was in The X Factor. We were seeing each other for a while, but we had to be apart for months on end so it put a lot of pressure on the relationship and we finally split up. We still speak to each other, but it was just one of those things.