Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction

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.

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 mates 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 queue 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 any more? 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 back-up plan was to become a fireman. But then, when I was 16, I decided to give singing and The X Factor another go.

THE NEXT STEP

Trying out for The X Factor for a second time was really nerve-wracking because now I wanted it more than ever. Some friends and family members were even a bit worried about me going for it, in case I got let down again, but I knew I had to try, whatever happened. I desperately wanted to get a yes from Simon and prove how much I’d come on since the last time I was on the show. I’d grown up so much since I was last there.