Liam Payne was most mature member of One Direction – he had big ambitions…I told him he’d be as famous as pop megastar

I REMEMBER meeting all of the One Direction boys as individuals before they got put together as a band.

Liam had auditioned two years earlier as a solo artist but the timing hadn’t been right and Simon Cowell asked him to come back.

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He wasn’t the oldest in the band but he felt the most mature and reserved.

So later when he got together with Cheryl, it didn’t seem like the age difference was odd.

He carried himself like a star early on and took music very seriously.

I remember he would often be sat at the piano in the house, with a furrowed brow trying to work out a tune.

Even at the start, One Direction had so much fan mail.

We’d stick it all up on the dressing room walls, because it just made the room more fun and interesting.

Liam got a lot.

I remember asking Liam to come on The Xtra Factor one week because we had Justin Bieber on and I thought they looked very similar at the time.

I took a photo of them side by side and said to Liam, “You’re going to be as famous as him one day.”

He was shy about that, almost bashful.

Liam was a lovely boy with big ambitions and dreams that he was 100 per cent chasing.