One Direction: Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction by One Direction Read Free Book Online

much more confident. We’re five guys, and guys don’t usually dance that much, so we’ve made sure we don’t take the mickey out of each other when we’re trying new things. We’re willing to give anything a go and I think that’s a good attitude to have in this industry. Also, with five guys together there’s always a little bit of competition—even when we’re just playing Pokemon against each other, which we do a lot. But I think that’s healthy as it means we’re all striving to be the best we can be.
     
    We started off the tour in Birmingham, which was nice as it’s now my home town. The first night was phenomenal and took us completely by surprise. Obviously when we’d done the rehearsals and come out of the elevator—the elevator which brings you up from underneath the stage—there had been no one there watching. Nothing could have prepared us for what faced us on that first night. We were waiting to go on stage and had our earpieces in, so we could hear some screams but not very clearly. We weren’t expecting anything mega, and then we popped out of the elevator and we could see all the banners and One Direction t-shirts and people screaming. When you look out into the audience and someone’s got your name on a banner, it doesn’t really sink in that it’s yours. I don’t know how Harry feels, because the number of girls wearing “I Love Harry Styles” t-shirts is unbelievable. They love him.
     
    We didn’t have any pre-stage rituals as such; we just used to mess around a lot. On The X Factor we used to do a team huddle and talk just before a performance, but this was more laid-back because I think we had a better idea about what we were doing every night.
     
    We shared a room with all the other male performers, and whenever anyone else was with us they’d mess around too. I think that’s the thing with us—we bring out the silly side in everyone. We get away with a lot because the people who are supposed to tell us off are generally having fun with us.
     
    The only time we got told off was when we had a fruit fight a couple of times. Louis is a spur-of-the-moment guy, and one night he started throwing fruit at people, everyone joined in and before I knew it we were all lobbing them at the walls.
     
    We do have proper guys’ humor. A couple of times right before we were going on stage Louis and Zayn would have competitions to see who could give each other the worst dead arm. We’d also play the word game where we were selected to say random words on stage. I had to say Rodney and Del Boy in the middle of a song one night. Someone else had to say combine harvester, and Ian Beale from EastEnders made it into a few tracks. Louis even did roly-polys on stage a couple of times. I think we were getting everything out of our system on that tour.
     
    A habit of mine was to make sure all my clothes were prepared and that I was ready to go on stage at any time. This is because when I used to do gigs a few years ago my dad always drilled into me that I should always be professional. I’ve kept that with me, so even though we had a great time, we did take things seriously.
     
    There were quite a few parties on tour, but I’m a fairly quiet person, so while most people went to the bar after the shows, I used to go to my room to be by myself. I’ve got a lot I want to achieve, so drinking doesn’t interest me. I did go to the bar every so often and chat to everyone, but things were quite manic and we were performing to about 9,000 people a night, so time alone was good. After that level of noise, however, silence becomes an almost scary sound andit’s strange. It’s something you have to get used to. When I’m on my own now I feel a lot more alone than I used to.

    When I was living in Wolverhampton there wasn’t a great deal to do, and the only time I ever went out was when my dad and I went to the local pub, the Great Western. It used to bore me sitting there doing nothing, and I’m