I’m sent a novel by Simon & Schuster, 584 pages of fantastical smut that reimagines the band not as popstars but as randy college students. Last spring, the Star went to press with a front page, HARRY X-RATED SEX PIC SHAME, that by second edition was changed to HARRY FURY AT FAKED SEX PIC. Their lives are surrounded in obfuscation, hopeful conjecture, nonsense. Really, even these kernels of bio come parceled in warning wrap. ![]() Two of the boys are single, two are coupled and one, Zayn, is engaged. Niall, they say, still loves his Nando’s. Louis not long ago tried to buy a football club. They were paid £30 a day as X Factor auditionees and now they’re worth about £16m a man. Where were the human boys in the middle of this? Louis Tomlinson (23), Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Niall Horan (all 21) and Harry Styles (20) showed up at regional auditions for The X Factor and were pulled from Doncaster, Bradford, Wolverhampton, Dublin and Cheshire respectively, to be transformed into world-straddling agents of profit. There are currently four varieties of branded bedclothes, not including sleeping bags. At a concert in Peru, 47 fans were crushed, needing treatment. That year’s documentary, One Direction: This Is Us, earned so much at the box office that Cowell was genuinely annoyed it didn’t receive an Oscar nomination. Midnight Memories was the world’s biggest selling album in 2013. I learn: Martin Scorsese is a fan, and that each band member has a lipstick. I know this, because in the week leading up to my meeting with the band, I go full immersion, swimming deep in the world of One Direction, the YouTube clips, merch catalogues, DVDs, album streams.įour years’ touring, releasing, deal-inking and generalised fan farming by the band has established a vast, primitive ocean of stuff around One Direction. ![]() Along with One Direction’s new album, Four, and a third volume of their memoirs, One Direction: Where We Are, there’s a new perfume out and a new single streaming online. It’s a time of year for ordering cardboard Louis and Liam masks (£3.99 each), or a top-to-toe outfit exactly replicating Zayn’s letterman-jacket look from the 2012 tour (£90). They agree to meet me at the end of the month, two days before Halloween. I t’s October, and the band are promoting a new album, their fourth in three years. You only drove one of them? Where were the others? “In different cars,” the driver said.įor a 15-minute drive? “Five members, five cars.”Īnd right there, One Direction became intriguing. There was something about the coy way the driver spoke, though, that made me wake up a bit. I’m not cold to the appeal of a well-steered pop group but, with One Direction, I’d not felt that snap that occurs when an artist or a band suddenly catches your interest – snaring you with an infectious vocal, a novel look, ideally an undeniably superb song. He said that the band had flown into town a week ago, and that he’d driven one of the boys to his hotel. Sure, I told the driver, One Direction are fine.
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