Читать книгу Harry Styles & Niall Horan: The Biography - Choose Your Favourite Member of One Direction - Sarah Oliver - Страница 18

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 even a photo of Harry pretending to work there!

During their stay, the boys managed to damage one of the chairs in Harry’s mum’s house, and during an interview with Radio 1, Anne asked if they could find out from the band who had broken it. ‘They’d sit out in the garden, around the fire pit and the chairs,’ she explained. ‘Just chilling and generally getting to know each other and cracking on with some work really and breaking chair legs!’

The boys had some petty squabbles in those few weeks, which was to be expected really because they were with each other 24 hours a day, near enough. They had entered the competition as solo artists, with different musical influences, and so they had different ideas about the kind of group they wanted to be. It was really tricky trying to decide who should sing lead vocals and who would take care of the harmonies. They would have all liked to be the lead singer but that wasn’t possible, so they had to think carefully. Each of them tried out and, after many practices and discussions, found their place in the group.

For Harry and the boys, being onstage and performing was really important and they didn’t want their X Factor journey to come to an end. Liam told X Factor cameras months later during the live shows, ‘Being on stage is absolutely amazing! I mean, we only spend such a short time on it but we love absolutely every second of it. We wouldn’t change any of it, it’s great!’

Zayn admitted on the X Factor website, ‘This for us is just unbelievable! We were all sat in the car today and I think it was Liam that said, “It feels like a dream and that we’re all going to wake up and our mums are gonna be like, ‘Wake up, get ready for school!’ kind of thing.”’

‘I think it’s easy for people at home to look at us and think we’re just having fun,’ Louis continued. ‘The reason we’re having fun is because we’re working hard.’