One Direction

March 2012

JELLY Babies, teddy bears and underwear. Since the dawn of time rock n roll in the mid-fifties, pop idols have had all manner of items thrown at them by fans, eager to please.

But in the case of boy band One Direction, it’s been a most unlikely orange vegetable.

“We get carrots thrown at us,” says Liam Payne.

“I think Louis (Tomlinson) made some remark once that he liked girls who liked carrots. So now they all bring carrots and throw them at us.

“He could have picked a softer fruit (fruit?) but he’s a bit stupid like that is our Louis.”

Or you could have suggested how much you like £20 notes?

“Yeah, we love Rolex watches.”

They have all been moved into a swanky new apartment block in London recently but the riches of pop fame have yet to roll in for the five lads, who met two years ago on the X Factor.

So the cash hasn’t started rolling in yet?

“No it hasn’t yet,” says Liam with a laugh.

“We’re still being paid in sweets.”

With the exception of JLS, One Direction are the biggest group to emerge from the X Factor.

They’d all auditioned as solo singers but judge Nicole Scherzinger suggested they team up to form a group.

As One Direction, Liam, Louis, Niall (Horan), Zayn (Malik) and Harry Styles went on to finish third behind Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson.

All three finalists recently played shows at the Royal Concert Hall but only One Direction have booked a return to the city, at the Capital FM Arena next March.

“We can’t wait to come back with a bigger show,” says Liam.

“We’re going to put on a massive show this time, with all the bells and whistles. And I hope you guys enjoy it.”

The group played two shows at the Royal Concert Hall in January on the same day. Both sold out before Christmas.

“They were really good shows,” says the 18-year-old from Wolverhampton.

He adds: “My sister’s boyfriend goes to university in Nottingham and she goes up there quite a lot, so I know a little bit about Nottingham. I know it’s got a good party scene.”

There’s a pause...

“Is it true that the boy to girl ratio in Nottingham is really different?”

That old chestnut is still doing the rounds then? Three girls for every boy...

“That’s mental!” he says.

But you have a girlfriend (he is dating a dancer from the X Factor) so what does it matter to you?

“Erm, I was just intrigued. For the boys, obviously. I just wanted to clear up an old legend, that’s what it was.”

Since emerging from the X Factor in 2010, One Direction have topped the charts with their debut single What Makes You Beautiful and album Up All Night, had two best-selling books and sold out a UK tour in a matter of minutes.

Last month they picked up a Brit Award for Best Single.

“It was amazing,” he says.

“To be in that room with so many established people and brilliant artists, we were so excited. I mean Example was the first one that we met and I think he such a great artist. The tunes he brings out...

“Rihanna was there and Bruno Mars. Then to walk away with a Brit... we are such lucky boys. The fans had been grafting away hard on the internet and it paid off.”

The single award was voted for by the public.

“We’re so thankful that our fans are the sort to pick up the phone and go on the computer and spend hours and hours voting.

“I actually heard that there was a girl in Sweden who voted for us 134 times. And to do that she had to make 134 e-mail accounts.”

So what about the aftershow party?

“To be honest our aftershow party was a bit pants. I was sat there with my girlfriend thinking, I’m not enjoying this. You quickly come to realise that aftershow parties are all about loads of talking and meeting people.

“Although I did meet Chris Martin. He was a nice fella.”

Did he offer any advice?

“He just said enjoy it. Everyone says the same thing really.”

The day after the Brits they were up for rehearsals at 10am, then flew to the US for a brief promotional tour.

There is YouTube footage of their arrival at the airport in Chicago, faced with a wall of hysterical girls.

It happens all the time, says Liam.

“We have to  be really careful what we say about our plans otherwise we have trouble at the airport.

“The other day in France we had a crowd surge and I lost a shoe.”

Rival boy band The Wanted, featuring Newark-born Jay McGuiness, have also been in the US promoting their single Glad You Came, which topped the iTunes chart. It’s the first time a UK boy band has enjoyed such success since Take That in the mid-nineties.

Says Liam: “They’ve been out there a while now with lots of radio play. Fair play.

“We’ve had a really good start over there. It’s a massive confidence boost to go out there knowing that we’ve sold some records. And you can feel the fans on Twitter.”

They’re back in the UK now so what happens next?

“We’re looking to do a bit more travelling and stuff. Coming back and forth to the UK as and when we can. It’s so difficult to stretch ourselves pout across all these different places.

“We really want to see all the fans but we’re struggling at the minute. It’s hard to be in ten place at once.”

One assumes there’ll be another album before next year’s tour?

“Yeah, for sure,” he says, before thinking about the Nottingham show.

“I don’t know what we’ll be performing but it’ll be a lot of fun. I know that much. I was watching the Justin Bieber DVD Never Say Never recently and it looked like so much fun. I can’t wait to get out there.”

He has since restyled his hair but for a while, like Harry Styles, he’d been accused of copying the Bieber fringe.

“The last holiday I had was the Christmas before last. That was to Florida with my parents and my girlfriend. We went to one of the theme parks and I got recognised before I’d even got on the first ride. It was an English person who picked me out.

“Then the Americans thought I was Justin Bieber. No I’m not Justin Bieber!” he adds, with a chuckle.

“They were funny times.”

So what is life like on the road for One Direction?

“We play computer games and have a laugh with the boys. It’s a bit like being on a school trip.

“It’s like a really bad version of The Inbetweeners actually. That’s kind of how our lives are at the moment.”

Tickets for One Direction’s show at the Capital FM Arena on March 20, 2013 are sold out. Hospitality tickets are still available from £88. Call 08444 124624.

To register for notifications of returns or extra tickets visit www.capitalfmarena.com.

Brendan O'Carroll (Mrs Brown)

May 2011

Brian Clough was the Mrs Brown of football

THAT his mother died when he was just 28 did Brendan O’Carroll a favour, he says. It’s a surprisingly dark moment in an otherwise bright chat with the comedy star, who is taking a break at his holiday home in Florida when we catch up.

“I never failed when she was alive,” says the 55-year-old Dubliner, the youngest of 11 children.

“And to learn you need to fail. Between the age of 28 and 35 everything I touched turned to cr*p. I failed a lot and I learned a lot. So, as much as I loved her and I adored the ground she walked on, probably the best thing she ever did for me was to die.”

He believes she would have enjoyed his success.

“I was a waiter when she died. She would have absolutely loved this.”

It was more than 20 years ago that his comedy career turned around, when Irish radio station RTE commissioned him to write a series of short stories based on his character, Agnes Brown, the loud-mouthed widow, whose favourite pastime is meddling in the lives of her six children.

The series ran for three years. O’Carroll followed that with a series of bestselling Mrs Brown books, sell-out stage tours, nine DVDs and even a movie, starring Angelica Huston, called Agnes Brown.

But he’s only really become a household name in Britain in the past few months with the BBC TV series Mrs Brown’s Boys.

It’s riddled with expletives, so did he have trouble getting them past BBC censors.

“I expected them to say there’d be none but they took the opposite view,” he says. “Bizarrely, the first script meeting I had with them, they said ‘We want you to do the show exactly as you would on stage, then all we have to think about is what time we put it on at’.”

He adds: “I don’t know if you noticed but as the series went on I cut them down. That first episode had 34 effs in it and I thought that’s too many. So if there was any editing it was done by me, not them.”

Mrs Brown was a success for O’Carroll, whose wife Jenny plays Cathy in the series, long before he reached British TV, to the extent that he’s able to work for only six months of the year.

“The BBC get six weeks of my time and that leaves me 20 weeks to tour, which I spend across the United States, Ireland and the UK. And then I take off on holiday for 26 weeks.”

“Way back, when I’d only been doing stand-up for a year or so, I got a call from a guy who wanted me to do a date. I’d already booked a caravan holiday, so I said ‘Sorry, I can’t’. He said ‘OK, I’ll give you £500’. I said ‘No, I’m actually not working that weekend.’ He rang me back later: ‘£750 and that’s me last offer.’ I said ‘look, I’m not working’ and he said ‘You’ve some cheek.... £1,500 and that’s it.’”

He laughs: “I said ‘What date did you want me to do? I’ll be there!’. I learnt a lesson. The scarcer you are, the more valuable you are.”

As well as his home in Dublin, he has another in Orlando where he spends a lot of the winter. It’s where he’s been holed up ahead of next month’s UK tour of Good Mourning Mrs Brown.

“It’s 84 degrees and glorious. It’s only now that I realise what people mean by seasonally affected disorder. The feeling of getting up in the morning to a blue sky is amazing. It really does cheers you up.”

He adds: “The BBC are under the impression that I’m actually writing the next series for them but I haven’t a clue what to write. We start recording in September. And there’s a possibility of us doing a Christmas special.”

Before that he’ll shoot new ITV sitcom The Security Men, written by Caroline Aherne.

“It’s set in a shopping centre and I’m working opposite Bobby Ball, which I’ve wanted to do for years. I’m looking forward to that because it’s not my script. I just do my piece then go.”

O’Carroll spent his teenage years doing odd jobs as a waiter, milkman, pirate radio DJ and painter and decorator, even running his own bar and cabaret lounge.

“I still have to pinch myself,” he admits.

He’ll be bringing his show to Nottingham for the first time, with six dates from June 28.

“I have never set foot in Nottingham in my life and I am so looking forward to it because I was a Nottingham Forest fan during the Cloughie years and I loved that man. I thought he was so brash.

“He was the Mrs Brown of football. He said what he liked and he was prepared to accept the consequences.”

Good Mourning Mrs Brown at the Royal Concert Hall, June 28-July 3. Tickets £19.50-£27.50, 0115 989 5555, www.gigsandtours.com

Travel: Florida

July 2003

Jesus unblocked my toilet. No, really. Third day in and after a couple of near misses I finally managed to plug the sub-standard porcelain bowl. Don’t wish to labour the point but Yank toilets lack the depth of a good British model. So, there we are, bathroom awash with...
Anyway, we report it to reception and leg it in to the Florida heat. On our return all is clean, including the $10 tip I left. On the cistern is a bright orange compliment card. “We believe we have corrected the problem but if not please call the front desk, dial 0. Thank You. Jesus Erng...” The surname was indecipherable.
As it turned out it wasn’t the only small miracle the missus and I were to experience during seven days at Lake Buena Vista, near Orlando. The Sunshine State is now one of the most popular destinations for sun and fun-seeking Britons. One of the reasons they come to Orlando — sorry, the main reason — is Disney. And yet we never saw Mickey Mouse once. Apart from a fridge magnet in the airport on the way home, that is.

Being first-timers we had a vague idea that Orlando probably was Disney World with a few surplus attractions. Not so. Over the space of one week we had the best of times without setting foot in one of the Disney theme parks. We did make it to Downtown Disney — the free bit with its cinemas, nightly fireworks display, Virgin Megastores, the House of Blues, fridge magnet shops and Planet Hollywood, the movie-themed restaurant co-owned by Arnie, Sly and Bruce Willis. Great if you like plain food and queuing. We simply didn’t have time to try the county-sized empire that contains four separate Disney parks: Epcot, MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom and that one with the iconic castle, Magic Kingdom.
So what did we spend so much time doing apart from sweating and saying “blimey, it’s too hot”? Well, shopping for starters. Ahh, the shopping. Call me a big girl but faced with cheap designer clothes I’m like a big girl faced with cheap designer clothes. We must have gone every day and filled an extra suitcase with stuff. That’s a Samsonite suitcase (£40), filled with Timbaland shoes (£12), Ralph Lauren jean shorts (£10), RL T-shirts (£6), a gents brown leather case (£50)... like the food it is all so chirping well cheap.

Anyway, we did do some sightseeing. There was Seaworld, a huge park full of sea lion shows, a few rides, a few whales and dolphins, which didn’t come and say hello because those pesky kids were in the way. The Kennedy Space Centre was disappointing but only because after spending an hour getting there by car, it was a two-hour trip on a coach to get to the interesting bits at Cape Canaveral. We settled for a look in the Space Shuttle (claustrophobic) and a few dormant rockets. Universal Studios is an astonishing, mad place and you could easily spend a week just going round that. So turning up at 9pm when it shut at 10pm wasn’t getting our money’s worth. Still, we saw the nightly fireworks display (which made our bonfire night spectacle on The Forest look like a damp sparkler) and a meal in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Most Orlando visitors stay on International Drive, three miles from where we were somewhat isolated at Lake Buena Vista (we had to hire a car). It’s the better location because you can walk to attractions like Wet n Wild, some upside down house (Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), The Hard Rock Vault and the one place well worth avoiding... an English pub called The Cricketers Arms. Vile place. Dirty. Poor beer. Stay clear.

Talking of filth, when we arrived the Orlando Sentinel carried the headline “Beachgoers swim in sewage: Stomach-churning but surprisingly non-stinky sewage plagued beachgoers and lifeguards in south Brevard County”. Not that we were disturbed by that. The beach doesn’t really figure in Orlando. The hotel pools are mighty fine if you want a dip and there are better things to do in-land than swimming. Too much in fact. A week really isn’t long. You’d struggle to get it all in in a month. So we’ll be back. We’re just praying now for a financial miracle.