‘Quite a lot of the girls I get photographed with are just friends and then, according to the papers, I have, like, 7,000 girlfriends’ Harry
But you know we couldn’t compare what
we do with what the British athletes did at the Olympics. We are very
proud to be British and if we have done our bit to promote Britain in a
historic year for the country that’s brilliant,’ says Louis with a grin,
prompting both Harry and Niall to nod their heads in agreement.
What
distinguishes One Direction (aka 1D) from the boy bands of previous
generations – apart, perhaps, from Take That (who actually never broke
America, but whose longevity 1D dream of emulating) – is the fact that
they do not have the usual limited fanbase of fickle prepubescent girls.
Grown women in their 20s, 30s and 40s will blushingly admit to a crush
on one or other of the five (usually Harry Styles, who has a reputation
for liking ‘cougars’ following his well-publicised affair with TV
presenter Caroline Flack when he was 17 and she 32). Nor have they
estranged boys – my own 20-year-old son and his university mates might
not buy 1D albums, but they nonetheless like and relate to the band, and
have even provided me with a list of questions to ask them.
One
Direction’s popularity is such that between them they have, at the last
count, a combined Twitter following of around 32 million and are so
dominant on the internet that when I Googled Louis his name came up
first – ahead of Louis Vuitton – while Harry Styles may have taken
second place to Harry Potter, but was ahead of Harry Windsor.
The Charming One: Harry
The Chiselled One: Louis
The Competitive One: Liam
The Cute One: Niall
The Coiffed One: Zayn
We
meet at the end of a particularly hard couple of weeks, during which
the boys have been working from ‘7am to the early hours’ to promote
their new album. No easy feat for teenagers who are traditionally
nocturnal creatures – later they confess that ‘sleep’ is one of the main
sacrifices they have made for their careers. Aware of their fatigue (at
the photo shoot I attended the previous day, Niall was asleep on one
sofa while Zayn snoozed on another) and their love of sweets (it has
been claimed that their publicist gives them two packets of Haribo at
5pm every day) I arrive with a box of Hummingbird Bakery sugar-loaded
cupcakes.
‘Wow, you are
the best, these are wicked,’ says Harry as the boys open the box and
distribute the cakes. Only Louis – who the others say is the ‘most body
conscious’ – resists, saying politely he will save his till later.
While
they eat I start my questions, asking if they sometimes worry that each
of them has been characterised in a certain way, like the Spice Girls.
