One Direction: Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction (4 page)

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,
Forever Young
, go to number one in the UK 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 realize 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 was 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.

SIGNING COPIES OF OUR FIRST BOOK,
FOREVER YOUNG

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 recognize 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 guys 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
: 2/1/1994

STAR SIGN
: Aquarius

favorite…

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

COLOR
: 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 other 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 friends

BAND
: The Beatles, Queen

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

WHAT KIND OF UNDERWEAR 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.

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 around, 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 the 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 percent 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 soccer balls 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 in 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 the Wolverhampton and Bilston running team, and for three of the five years I was the third best 1500 meters 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 learned 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.

GETTING SOME EARLY BOXING PRACTICE IN!

I USED TO LOVE WOODY AS A KID

CHILLING OUT AT HOME, AGE FIVE

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
Dragons’ 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 mom 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 soccer 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 till 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 friends 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 on
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.

I was 14 when I first tried out for
The X Factor
. I had become really bored with running and although I was on the reserve list for the 2012 Olympics, I wanted to find something I could do apart from run. When I told my friends I was going in for
The X Factor
we had a bit of banter because they thought it was quite funny, but they were also supportive.

The only thing I really wanted to do was see Simon Cowell, and I waited nine hours in a line to get that chance, but it was definitely worth it. I felt quite grown-up at the time and like I was capable of handling everything that came with being on the show. But looking back now at all we’ve been through, there is no way I could have handled it. No way at all.

It was horrible to be turned away at Judges’ Houses, but if I had made the live shows I wouldn’t have known what had hit me. JLS and Alexandra Burke were in that year and I would have been gone straight away.

It was hard going back to school having done
The X Factor
because I got a real taste for performing on a big stage and all I wanted to do from that moment on was be a pop star. My schoolwork suffered quite a bit, to be honest, and I remember my head of year talking to me about my grades and things. I remember him saying, “Your grades are slipping. What if your voice breaks and you can’t sing anymore? What will you do then? You won’t have any qualifications to fall back on.”

That really hit me and I started working a lot harder from then on and I ended up getting one A+ in PE, as well as two Bs, six Cs and a D. The school wanted me to carry on and do A-levels, but I went to music college instead. At least I did get decent grades in the end, though.

Going away for a few years after I first tried out for
The X Factor
and doing gigs was the best thing I could have done. I worked with producers and writers but I never signed any deals, just in case I ever wanted to try out for
The X Factor
again. If I hadn’t made it I was going to do an apprenticeship with my dad, which seemed quite exciting to me, but first he wanted me to give the singing all I had.

My dad works in a factory building planes, and in my mind I was going to be playing with giant Lego or something, but it’s actually really hard work. My other backup plan was to become a fireman. But then, when I was 16, I decided to give singing and
The X Factor
another go.