My mum would never let me get away with that sort of thing. If I was at home and I asked her to get me a drink she’d be like ‘You know where the glasses are.’ At the same time it’s funny when I go home now because I’m so used to doing everything myself, but my mum still likes to look after me in a lot of ways, so I feel like a proper kid again when I’m back with my family.
A lot of people say nice things about the band and we get a lot of praise. Obviously it’s lovely to hear and it always puts a smile on your face when someone tells you that you’re good at what you do, but I want to keep my feet on the ground as much as possible. I would never want to get big-headed. It’s such an unattractive trait and I can’t imagine myself ever being like that. I always want to be aware of staying true to myself.
I spent Christmas mainly at home with my family. That was the most important thing to me. That, and seeing my friends, which I managed to do a few times. Things had been so busy that all I wanted to do was have a break, watch TV and eat and sleep. I had such a nice time, doing the same family things we do every year.
One thing that was different was that some fans came to my house over Christmas, and it was so cold that I felt really bad about them being outside. I did go out and see them as much as possible if I was there, but I felt terrible that they were standing in the freezing cold because of me. As a band we’ve always said that we’ll never complain about people coming to see us or wanting autographs or photos. They’re the reason we’re doing all of this.
We appreciate the support so much. It’s great to know that people like what we’re doing. Some days I read 100 great Twitter comments and there may be one from someone saying they don’t like me. If I’m having a bad day for some reason, that’s the one I remember and it can make me feel a bit down. Then I’ll go back and read the nice messages again and they’ll lift me. They mean a lot to all of us.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
The New Year meant getting back to work, and we knew it was going to be busy. We had the tour coming up, so we had rehearsals for that, and we also had quite a lot of meetings and gigs, so things were pretty non-stop. But we’d all had a good break and we were ready to get back into it.
One of the first things we did was go to LA. When we got told we were going there my mouth literally fell open. I love going abroad but I’d never been to LA and had always wanted to. I’d seen and read so much about it, so I was looking forward to seeing how much of it was true.
LA is something else. Everyone you see looks like they’re famous, but I really liked it as a place. It was really hot there, so we were wearing shorts and t-shirts most of the time, and we got to chill out quite a bit as the hotel we stayed in, the W, had a pool.
What I found weird was that the people over there are so polite. When you get your breakfast brought to you in a hotel in England they’ll drop it off and barely say a word, but over there they’re so cheerful you want to invite them in to share it with you. This one woman who dropped off my food was like ‘Good morning, sir, how’s your day going? Where do you want me to put this good stuff?’ They literally couldn’t do enough for you.
We did some recording in this really cool complex where there were loads of different things going on. In one studio they were recording the backing vocals for Glee, and then Randy Jackson’s office was 100 metres away, so we went and met him and he was an amazing guy. He was so friendly.
We got some time off to go shopping too, so I literally raided Abercrombie and Fitch. Louis reckons I bought every single t-shirt they had in there, but I think he’s exaggerating. I did get quite a few, though …
I wish we’d had more time in LA, but we did really enjoy the five days we spent there. It was like I expected it to be, with the sun and the glamorous people, and it’s definitely somewhere I’d like to go back to. I really want to go to Venice Beach and see what that’s like.
We were all quite tired when we landed back in London, but we were soon woken up by the sight of hundreds of fans. It’s become a bit of a legendary story now about us being mobbed and the police being called and everything. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life. We’d seen loads of fans at The X Factor, but usually they were either outside behind a gate or in the audience. And when we meet fans at hotels or outside gigs they’re usually in small groups. Well this was definitely not a small group!
I was really shocked by the whole experience of having to run through the crowd, but I made myself enjoy it instead of being scared of it, because I knew it was something special. When we were in the police van afterwards we all sat there going ‘What the hell?’ It was almost as if it hadn’t happened, it was so surreal, but looking back on it now it was an amazing moment.
When tour rehearsals came around we were well aware that we would have to work really hard. We wanted to put on an amazing show and we had a lot of new stuff to learn, including dance routines. We were taught things like how to put more energy into moving around, which is hard when you’re in an empty warehouse performing to no one.
We also had to practise putting talking bits in between songs, which also felt weird because we’d be talking to an audience of six crew members, and even they didn’t respond.
Getting to put everything we’d learnt into practice was the ultimate pay-off for all the hard work we’d done. I can’t even begin to describe what it was like when we all stood on the stage together for the first night of the tour in Birmingham. Looking out and seeing all the banners and hearing thousands of people shouting your name … It really doesn’t get much better than that. We’d performed on The X Factor and we’d done gigs, but nothing compared to this. I had to stand there for a moment just to take it all in, but as soon as we started singing we were off.
I think even that first arena performance in Birmingham was different to anything else we’d ever done in terms of how much energy we put into it and how much we moved around the stage. It felt almost natural being there, even though it was also completely and utterly surreal. There were several times when we all looked at each other and I could tell we were all thinking the same thing – ‘This is incredible!’
The rush you get being on stage in front of so many people is indescribable. I wish everyone could have that feeling. I can be so tired and feeling like I’m in a bad mood, then I get on stage and I feel amazing. I’m so hyped up when I come off stage that I shout a lot and jump around. There’s no feeling like it.
I loved the tour so much I never wanted it to stop. I didn’t even get homesick, because we were so busy we didn’t get time to think about it, but I actually felt really guilty about that. All in all we were pretty well behaved on the tour, but we had our moments, like the fruit fight. At least we didn’t throw any TVs out of windows or anything … but there’s still time.
The wrap party at the end of the tour was good, but we all felt sad saying goodbye to everyone. I was up until about five in the morning so I was a bit tired the next day, but we had a day off to chill out so it didn’t matter too much.
When the tour was over, Louis, his mate Stan, my friend Johnny and I all went off on a skiing holiday together. I’d never been skiing before and I was desperate to give it a go. We had a brilliant laugh in Courchevel and I’d love to go back again.
We worked really hard on the album to find