I Became A Journalist To Interview One Direction – Here’s The Story Of When I Met Niall Horan

As One Direction turn 10, we revisit when Directioner and Grazia entertainment writer Bonnie McLaren finally interviewed 1/5 of the world's most famous boyband.

I didn’t become a journalist because I wanted to write or because I cared about breaking important stories. Or even because it looked exciting on TV. I became a journalist because my dream was to one day interview One Direction{ =nofollow}. Journalism, I hoped, was a fast track to doing just that.

So, despite the fact I no longer have their posters on my bedroom wall, and I can’t quite recite their birthdays by heart anymore, when I was asked if I wanted to do a sit-down interview with Niall Horan – just before the release of his comeback track Nice To Meet Ya - I typed ‘YES’ so hard I almost lost an acrylic.

A couple of weeks later my stomach is doing front flips while I’m waiting in a suite at London’s Soho Hotel with Niall’s publicist. Thankfully, Niall is running a few minutes behind, meaning I have time to go for my ninth emergency wee and check my false eyelashes are properly stuck on. I’m so busy nervously inspecting my nails that I don’t even realise when Niall saunters in, saying hello and asking how I am. He arrives with such little fanfare, that, for a moment, I thought it was his manager or another member of his entourage.

Niall looks happy and relaxed. He’s wearing an Eagles sweatshirt – his second album, he says, is ‘rockier’ – with jeans and beige Converse. It seems redundant to mention how good looking he is, considering he was in the most famous boyband of all time, but one thing that does surprise me is that we are roughly the same height. I tell him that unfortunately I was ‘one of those annoying fangirls’ – a knowing look flashes across his face as he stirs his drink.

Niall was always known as ‘the blonde Irish one’ during his time in the band, but he’s since said goodbye to the peroxide. For the last four years, since the band went on ‘hiatus’ – or whatever they called it, to give teen girls nursing broken hearts a glimmer of hope – Niall has sported natural very dark, almost black, hair. ‘I think people still have that thing in their head where I'm the blonde,’ he says. He assures me he didn’t shed his boyband look post-One Direction deliberately - like a caterpillar going through metamorphosis or Miley Cyrus lopping off all her hair and twerking on Robin Thicke after Hannah Montana - rather, he couldn’t be arsed keeping up the hair maintenance.

He is recognised a little less these days, and seems very comfortable with that. ‘I mean if we were back in the day and we were in this hotel,’ Niall says, gesturing to the window, ‘there would have been 5000 people.’ He adds matter-of-factly, ‘Now, there is probably no one out there for me.’

It’s easy to forget just how young the boys were when they met on the X Factor, back when they were merely dollar signs in Simon Cowell’s eyes. All of them were teenagers; Niall was 16, and Louis Tomlinson, the oldest, was 19. They didn’t win the series, coming third after Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson – but they went on to levels of fame that no other X Factor contestant has ever achieved. Obsession, love and hysteria from teenage girls was monetized, not just in the UK, but the world over. I should know, I was one of them, a girl happy to spend all of her pocket money on a signed Take Me Home CD.

Even now, after years in the industry, Niall seems genuinely in awe of the fans. He is very careful to speak about them with utmost respect; he knows he owes their career to them, no matter how dedicated and fervent they can be. ‘You’ve got loads of artists everywhere that really want fan support, that's what you want,’ he says. ‘Young females are so powerful once they grasp onto something, they can make it as big or as small as they want.’

He says, a few times, that he wished he could have walked down the street while he was at the height of their fame. (‘Last year I passed the Eiffel Tower for the first time, I've been driven past it a billion times in police escorts.’) But, instead of sounding resentful, he sounds accepting, kindly putting the constant barrage of attention down to the girls’ passion. He never speaks ill of his fans. He seems nervous about offending me, and the whole fanbase in general; it’s either incredibly calculated, or incredibly sweet. I can’t help thinking it’s the latter.

Since leaving the band, Niall has played 81 shows as part of his Flicker World Tour. He loves touring, and gets on with his band well. I saw him in Brixton last year with one of my reluctant friends, who was too old to be swept up by 1D mania first time round, but, by the time Niall went into a storming cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark even she was won over.

It’s no surprise that Niall is a pro at performing live – he’s been doing it for almost a decade. The first time I saw him in concert was one of the best days of my life. I got the tickets for Christmas. On the ferry from the Isle of Wight to Southampton, I thought I was going to be sick. Not because the weather was ferocious, but because I was so excited.

I quickly regurgitate this story to Niall, telling him how I painted a banner for the show, leaving out the fact that I nearly fainted when Zayn pointed at it, and how consequently, I lost my voice for days. Not for the first time during the interview, I’m self-conscious that I’m rambling. ‘It was just after Christmas, if I'm not mistaken,’ he interjects, saving me. I laugh, relieved but also surprised that he remembers. ‘It was the first day back after the Christmas school holidays. We were all shitting it.’

I’m struck by the fact that while I was screaming in the stands and he was on the stage, we were both just teenagers who’d spent the Christmas holidays with our family. He says that he recently went back to Bournemouth for a solo show, adding that he was shocked by how small the BIC was.

Recently, Louis Tomlinson – who is also working on new music – did an interview with The Guardian, where he described how he and Niall cried before the group’s final show, the last night of their On The Road world tour in Sheffield.

‘I actually I read the article you're talking about,’ he tells me. ‘We still had work after that show - but yeah, we were balling our eyes out right before we went near the stage. We were just like, this is the last time that we will get in a huddle and walk onto a stage for a long time together.’

One of the main things I want to know, especially after hearing Liam Payne{ =nofollow}say there wasn’t much the boys had in common, is if the band have stayed in touch. I’m aware he’s probably been asked this in every interview ever – but at heart, I’m still a fangirl and I need to know.

It sounds like he’s still closest to Louis. ‘I see Louis loads,’ he says. ‘I mean, I speak to him say once a week, maybe twice a week. I live around the corner from Harry [Styles]. I've seen him recently, we were at a gig together.’ And Liam? ‘The same.’

He doesn’t – intentionally or otherwise – mention Zayn, who acrimoniously left the group in 2015.

‘We will never not be close, to be honest,’ he adds. ‘Because I think everyone had this perception that when you break up it was because of a big fucking row or something. I’ve never seen a row in my life. We were on the road for six weeks at a time... I mean, we'd fight over who was using the hairdryer.’

It feels impossible not to ask: does he feel envious of his friends back in Ireland with their normal teenage lives? ‘ One hundred per cent,’ he sighs. ‘All the time.’ And then he surprises me. ‘I would have loved to have gone to uni.’ What, I shriek, genuinely surprised that he would have switched being one of the world’s most famous young men for staying in a grotty uni halls, drinking VKs at Freshers week and living off pesto pasta. (He reassures me that One Direction still went on wild nights out, but that they just had to be cautious, roping off sections in clubs.)

Turns out he’s not thought his alternate life through properly, but he says he might have done biology or geography. ‘I didn't know, like I was 16,’ he admits, sounding slightly overwhelmed again. ‘I filled out a form for a TV show. And then six months later, I was in one of the biggest bands in the world. It's just weird.’

Under the watchful eye of thousands of fans, and the entire tabloid media, one of the other challenges the singer has had to deal with is keeping his private life private. (He was last linked to American actor and singer Hailee Steinfeld, but they split towards the end of last year.) ‘You have to have mad conversations, like if you were to meet someone for instance, you say, “You know, I like to keep things very private blah blah blah.” It’s a conversation that I have been having for nine or 10 years. And these are conversations that you have to have, because I just I want to keep things low-key.’

I tell Niall I grew up with the band (I’m 21 and he’s 26) – each of their albums soundtracking a different part of my life. I ask if he feels like he’s grown up with fans, too. ‘I'm only five years older than you,’ he says, without patronising me. ‘So there's not that much of a difference really. I mean, everybody [has grown up], even in the way that they talk to you. We had to mature pretty quick for our age group - and now I get spoken to like I'm 26.'

Eventually I realise that we’ve been chatting, uninterrupted, for ages. Most people at Niall’s level of fame offer you a scant few minutes to grab as many questions as you can, with a sense of distrust. Not here. The interview winds down to a natural close, and I ask if we can take a picture (once a Directioner, always a Directioner).

‘One thing I would have died to know when I was 14,’ I say, as I pose for the photo. ‘Would you have dated a fan?’

This is it, the question that I spent most of 2012 wondering. The question I almost didn’t ask because I was so nervous.

Niall Horan looks at me, slightly bemused. ‘One hundred percent,’ he says. ‘I mean, there’s no reason why not. If someone comes up and screams in your face, then it's not the best start. If you can sit down and have a chat with somebody, then there's no reason why not.’

It’s the exact answer I wanted, one that sounds like it came straight from the pages of Top of the Pops.

‘Be nice,’ Niall half-jokes, as I switch the dictaphone on my phone off. I tell him he doesn’t need to worry about that.

Nice To Meet Ya is out now.