Smartly dressed in a shirt and waistcoat, the 14-year-old Wolverhampton schoolboy strides into the audition room, confidently sings Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon and then awaits the verdicts from The X Factor judges. Liam Payne has impressed Cheryl Cole, then the country’s biggest pop star, at whom he winks during the performance. “I like you, I think you’re really cute,” she says, flashing him a dazzling smile. Simon Cowell says he is missing grit, emotion and fun — but sends him through.
That audition clip from the ITV show in 2008 makes for strange viewing now. A few years later, Payne would make countless millions for Cowell as one-fifth of the most successful boy band in the world — and goes on to