One Direction: Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction (11 page)

I got a real buzz from the madness of it all, but Niall was absolutely terrified. To me it felt like being on a rollercoaster or something, and I just went with it. When so much is happening and you don’t know where to turn or where to go—and you know everyone is there for you—it feels amazing.

In the end we left through a side door, but everyone saw us and we were completely mobbed. I was wearing a hoodie and half of it got ripped off me. Later, when we went to a signing for the first One Direction book,
Forever Young
, there was a girl there who had brought the sleeve along with her to show me—and even asked me to sign it. I thought that was hilarious.

Rehearsals for the tour were another big thing for us early in the year. They were quite intense, and when we started practicing “Only Girl in the World” we realized that there was a lot more movement in it than there had been when we did the track in
The X Factor
. It wasn’t that it was difficult, but there was a lot to take in and learn and we had to go over things about 20 times. We were all keen to move on and learn new songs, so we got a bit frustrated at times. We all gave everything a go, though, and you could see us getting better and better each day, and that spurred us on.

Looking back at how much we’ve grown, I definitely think all of the rehearsing paid off. When I watch our performances from
The X Factor
, anything that required a little bit of movement or energy—like “Only Girl in the World”—looks so different from how we perform it now. I think we’ve all learned to have a bit more stage presence and we’re much more confident. Harry has always been the most comfortable on stage, but I think we’ve all caught up with him now. Going on
The X Factor
and playing in arenas so early on in your career is some of the best training you can ever have.

One of the best things about the tour was getting to hang out with everyone from the show. Matt is such a good guy and we had fun taking the mickey out of him, saying things like “Look at me, I’m Matt, I think I’m sick ’cause I won
The X Factor
.” It was also great to be around Aiden again—he was always someone I could talk to outside the band.

Every night after the shows an area of the bar or a room would be hired for us to go and chill out in. I tended to go there every other night so I didn’t get burned out. I think Niall was the only one of us who was down there every night—he loves to talk. He was always chatting away with the crew or the dancers. Even if we were down there he didn’t sit with us; he’d search out new people to talk to.

Every now and again we’d get this urge to do some daft stuff. When we were in Sheffield we trashed the dressing room. It all started with me trying to throw an apple core into the bin and missing, which somehow turned into everyone picking up apples and throwing them at the wall as hard as they could. We were sharing a room with the other male artists and we all started picking up any fruit we could find, so there were oranges all over the floor and bits of pear all over the tables. For those five minutes it was so much fun. We knew we shouldn’t be doing it, but we were caught up in the moment.

After the fruit fight I popped out to go to the toilet, and when I walked back into the room Vicky, the tour manager’s assistant, had just come in and seen the mess. I acted dumb, saying, “What has gone on here? Vicky, I have no idea how this happened, I was out of the room. Let me help you pick all of this up.” I started helping her but couldn’t stop looking over at Zayn and smiling. Meanwhile Vicky kept thanking me, so I totally got away with it.

We did the same again in Liverpool, and this time we thought we would get away with it because we threw all the fruit into the shower and shut the curtains. We left the venue after the show and nothing had been said, then the tour manager
Cara confronted us with two pictures from the dressing room showing us the state of the shower. She looked at us and said, “What is this?” Zayn got all nervous. He couldn’t look at her and just said, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” In the end we denied all knowledge. I think she secretly found it quite funny.

ONE OF OUR FIRST BOOK SIGNINGS, AT LAKESIDE. WHAT A CROWD! WE LOVE OUR FANS!

During the tour we kept being given carrots. Basically, this was because in Week 2 of
The X Factor
all of us boys were asked what we like in a girl, and I thought it would be funny to say I like girls who like carrots. Ever since then fans have turned up to see us with carrot banners, t-shirts and loads of real carrots.

One night these two girls dressed as carrots were dancing at the bottom of the stage. A friend then gave me a carrot costume and I wore it on stage during a show. It was brilliant and I love all that. Mind you, I should probably be getting some kind of cut from farmers, because I’m sure carrot sales must have gone right up.

I loved the wrap party for the tour. It was a chance to kind of reflect on everything we’d done; in a way it was almost a relief it was over and to know that we had a bit of a break afterwards.

We had the most incredible time on the tour, but it was pretty hard work at the same time. We had quite a few nights out in the last week, and knowing that I didn’t have to get up the day after the party was such a bonus. I didn’t get to bed until 5 am, and then my mom drove me home to Doncaster, which took three hours. I was so relieved to get into my own bed.

I missed everyone after the tour had finished. In fact, I missed most things about it. People complain about the traveling, and it can get tiring at times, but we get to stay in nice places and see cool things so there’s really nothing to moan about. I can’t wait to do it all again—I can’t wait to do our theater tour. We love seeing everyone and the feeling of being on stage is second to none.

During the tour we filmed the ad for the DS Pokemon game and we all got given one free, which was amazing for me, Liam and Zayn, as we’re totally addicted to it. It was really cool filming it in a hotel room. We were just being really natural with each other and messing around, and it felt mad that we were filming a TV ad. That’s big time.

The whole time we were on the
X Factor
tour we were getting more and more excited about the fact that later we were going to be doing a One Direction tour. It will be a good chance for us to show what we can do. We’ve been planning it all year and whenever we were together we’d be talking about different things we could try. We’re excited about performing the album live for everyone.

After the tour finished Harry and I went skiing with our friends Stan and Johnny at Courchevel in France. It was really good fun. I’d never skied before, but by the end of it I was doing okay. We got recognized quite a lot but everyone was really nice and friendly.

When we found out that our first book,
Forever Young
, had got to number one we were so shocked. We got the chance to meet lots of the fans at the signings, which was brilliant. We couldn’t believe the size of the crowds that came along, especially at a signing in Lakeside Shopping Center. With all the fans who had come to see us, and the shoppers who were there too, everywhere we looked there were massive crowds of people. It was so nice to be able to say thanks to everyone for supporting us.

Recording the album was a bit frustrating at times, because we were desperate to find the right single, but when it came along it was amazing. We’ve got some great songs on the album, which show off all our voices. We worked with some incredibly talented people, like Steve Robson and Wayne Hector. Steve has worked with Busted and James Morrison and loads of others, and Wayne wrote “Flying without Wings” for Westlife. In LA we worked with the amazing RedOne.

He is someone we all look up to, so you can imagine how excited we were about that. We loved being back in LA, which we felt we knew a little bit already. We also enjoyed going to Sweden, where we thought the people were really cool.

This year we’ve been going on quite a lot of TV shows and also recording the documentary. We wanted to give the fans an insight into what life is like for us behind the scenes, and also give people who maybe aren’t fans yet the chance to find out more about us.
The X Factor
was so full-on, with cameras on us all the time, that we don’t even notice when they’re around any more, so it will definitely be very revealing.