Harry Styles & Niall Horan: The Biography - Choose Your Favourite Member of One Direction. Sarah Oliver
Niall was inconsolable, telling the camera, ‘Standing there, waiting for your name to be called – and then it’s not.’ Harry hid his face under his sweater and moved away from the camera; he didn’t want to talk any more.
The boys got ready to leave, but before they could go a member of staff came and called our five favourite lads back. Harry covered his face in shock, thinking that maybe things weren’t over after all. They were asked to go back on the stage with Esther Campbell, Rebecca Creighton, Sophia Wardman and Geneva Lane. None of them knew what was happening, but they didn’t have long to wait. Nicole spoke first, saying, ‘Hello, thank you so much for coming back. Judging from some of your faces, this is really hard. We’ve thought long and hard about it, and we’ve thought of each of you as individuals, and we just feel that you’re too talented to let go of. We think it would be a great idea to have two separate groups.’
Simon then suggested that they should form groups and might meet again in the future, before adding, ‘We’ve decided to put you both through. This is a lifeline – you’ve got to work 10, 12, 14 hours a day, every single day, and take this opportunity. You’ve got a real shot here, guys.’
Up until then, Harry and the rest of the boys had been thinking that the judges wanted them to re-audition the following year. Getting a pass to the judges’ houses round was unbelievable, as they hadn’t even sung together yet. They had to decide, though, whether they wanted to become a band, as they’d all wanted to be solo artists to begin with.
Harry knew straight away that he wanted to do it; after all, he’d been with White Eskimo and knew that performing with others was great fun. Liam wasn’t sure and wanted to think about it first. After a quick think, he said yes, he was going to give it his all. Zayn, Niall and Louis were all up for it, too, and they weren’t going to let Simon, Nicole and Louis down. They were going to be the best group ever to appear on The X Factor.
DID YOU KNOW?
Before entering The X Factor Louis had posted a forum online to see if anyone fancied forming a band and then entering The X Factor but no one had replied, so he decided to go for it anyway, as a solo artist.
DID YOU KNOW?
One Direction was officially formed on 23 July 2010 at 8.22pm.
Harry admitted: ‘[I went from] the worst feeling in my life to the best.’
As he walked into the room with all the other singers who had been chosen for the next round, Harry was so happy. He gave his bootcamp buddy Aiden Grimshaw the biggest hug!
The bootcamp episodes weren’t shown on TV until the October, so his family had a while to wait to see them on TV. Harry’s mum decided to throw a bootcamp party when it aired. Harry had never danced before his audition for The X Factor, so his family were impressed when they saw how well he had stepped up to the dance challenge. ‘I fill up with pride every time he’s on TV,’ Anne told the Crewe Chronicle. ‘I feel incredibly proud and it’s all so surreal to see my boy on the stage. At the end of the day, he’s my little baby and there he is, onstage in front of millions of people.’
Anne wasn’t the only proud one – right from when his first audition was shown on TV, people from his home village of Holmes Chapel showed their immense pride by supporting him in every way they could. In his first X Factor video Harry described Holmes Chapel as being ‘quite boring… nothing much happens there – it’s quite picturesque.’ His neighbours didn’t mind that he had said where they lived was dull, because they love how quiet it is. Shopkeepers and home owners put up ‘Go Harry’ and ‘Vote One Direction’ posters in their windows; they wanted all 6,000 Holmes Chapel residents to vote for him. The W Mandeville bakery where Harry used to work had One Direction loaves and cakes on display, and Anne even bought some cakes from there to give to Simon and Dermot. When he worked in the bakery, Harry’s job was to clean the floor at night and serve customers on a Saturday. His former boss Simon Wakefield was interviewed by the local newspaper. ‘He’s welcome back any time but I highly doubt he’ll be back to work,’ he told the Crewe Chronicle. ‘I think his career is sorted. He is a great lad and was really popular with the customers when he used to work on the counter.’
One Direction fans loved the fact that Harry used to work in a bakery and a Facebook page called ‘Harry Styles works in a bakery. I would check out his buns every day’ was set up. To date, it has more than 12,000 members.
DID YOU KNOW?
Before Harry worked in the bakery he had a newspaper round. He blames his bad posture on the heavy bag of papers he used to carry over his shoulder but he used to love riding his bike, so it was a good job at the time. After joining One Direction he was advised to take up Pilates once a week to help improve his posture but he is so busy he really doesn’t have the time.
One Direction (or the ‘unnamed boys’ group – because they didn’t have a name at this point) didn’t know who their mentor was going to be when they left bootcamp. It could have been Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole or Dannii Minogue (the judges themselves didn’t know because it was down to the show’s producers to decide). Shortly after bootcamp, the judges found out who would be mentoring each category. They were each in a different country when they got the phone call revealing their fate: Simon was in England, Louis in Ireland, Cheryl in America and Dannii was in Australia. Simon ideally wanted the ‘girls’ because he thought they were the strongest category, followed by the ‘boys’. When told that he would be mentoring the ‘groups’, he wasn’t at all happy and asked the producer to repeat what he had said, before replying sarcastically, ‘Thank you for repaying all of my hard work on the show this year.’
Harry and the boys had no idea that Simon thought that the groups weren’t as good as the boys and girls at this point. They were just excited about the fact that if they got through to the live shows they would get to work with arguably the biggest man in the music industry.
From the second they became a group on 23 July, the boys vowed to work together to make sure they made the live shows. In previous years, the groups formed by the judges had been hopeless, blaming lack of rehearsal time when criticised for not performing well enough. Harry and the boys knew they wouldn’t be able to impress Simon if they didn’t give it their all. They arranged to meet at Harry’s house in Holmes Chapel, a few days after bootcamp, which gave them just enough time to go home and pack a suitcase before heading off. It was the summer, so it was easy to make excuses if they needed to; they could just tell their friends they were going on holiday, and they weren’t missing school or college so they couldn’t get in trouble.
As well as practising they had to come up with a unique name that they all liked; they couldn’t turn up at Simon’s house without one. They thought of some ideas and texted each other while they were back at their own homes. Harry came up with the name One Direction, as he explained during an interview on an Australian chat show: ‘Before we met up for the time to practise, we were texting each other names constantly. I kind of thought what would sound good when the X Factor man said it. So, then I texted the boys and they all seemed to like it.’
They stayed at Harry’s house for a week, getting to know each other and rehearsing; then went home for a few days (so their mums could wash their clothes!) and came back for more rehearsals. Altogether they spent nearly three weeks rehearsing, day and night (and doing fun stuff too, of course). The lads got to see the best and worst parts of each other during those three weeks. They slept in a bungalow, which is at the bottom of the main house’s garden. It has its own swimming pool, which the boys took full advantage of during their stay. They also went to one of Harry’s favourite places – Great Budworth Ice Cream Farm, run by the Wilkinson family. The farm offers traditional flavours such as vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, and more unusual ones like marzipan, pineapple and Christmas pudding. If you go to the Great Budworth Ice Cream Farm Facebook page you can see a great album of photos of One Direction enjoying some ice creams, but it was a cold day so they’re wrapped up to keep warm. There’s