One Direction - Dare to Dream - Life as One Direction

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.

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.