Читать книгу Harry Styles & Niall Horan: The Biography - Choose Your Favourite Member of One Direction - Sarah Oliver - Страница 35

Eventually the band were given Simon’s number – and decided to make prank calls to him. They put on different accents and talked about his trousers being high.

Even though Simon hadn’t thought at bootcamp that they had the potential to win the whole competition, after seeing the boys perform so well in the judges’ houses round and in the first few weeks of the live shows, Simon changed his mind. He knew that Harry, Liam, Louis, Zayn and Niall had the potential to be in The X Factor final. When Aiden left the show it was a ‘wake-up call’ for Simon because Aiden had been a strong contender, and it made him commit even more time and energy into making sure that One Direction got better each week so they could secure a place in the final.

Although Louis Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole were mentoring the boys’ rivals they still heaped praise on them each week. In week five, after One Direction had sung ‘Kids in America’, Louis Walsh said to them, ‘What a brilliant way to end the show! Listen, everywhere I go there’s hysteria, it’s building on this band. You remind me a bit of Westlife, Take That, Boyzone… you could be the next big band. I loved everything about the performance.’

Cheryl Cole added, ‘That absolutely cheered me up and brightened up my night, I thoroughly enjoyed that performance. You are great kids: I love chatting to you backstage, you are just good lads, nice lads. Great performance, good song choice.’

The next week Dannii Minogue couldn’t get over how good they were at the Elton John classic ‘Something About the Way You Look Tonight’. ‘Guys, you are so consistent, it’s scary!’ she said in her feedback. ‘That song could have been really boring, but it was great – that’s what I would love to hear you sing at your concerts, which I’m sure you will be doing one day [crowd cheers].’

Simon Cowell then made an announcement, telling everyone watching how much confidence he had in Harry, Zayn, Liam, Louis and Niall. ‘This is the first time in all the years of X Factor where I genuinely believe a group are going to win this competition,’ he proclaimed. ‘And you know what? I want to say this, what was so impressive, you’ve seen the girls and anything else, and you’ve remained focused; you’ve been really nice to the crew, you’re nice to the fans and most importantly, everything that happened tonight from the choice of song to what you wore, it was all down to you. Guys, congratulations!’