Wherever and whenever I could sing or perform, I would. My dad was amazing. When I was a kid he was my driving force to get out there and perform to people. I never saw anything like this - as in One Direction - happening. In fact I don’t think anybody could ever have seen this coming. But for some reason - whether he was just crazy or not, I don’t know - Dad was convinced I’d end up doing something in music. ‘Liam,’ he’d say, ‘you’ve just got to get out there and perform. We need to get you more and more gigs. You can sing, and you’ve got what it takes, son. You can do this, I know you can.’ He thought that I’d maybe do just a solo record in the UK, but never anything worldwide. Then One Direction kicked off. So maybe he wasn’t the crazy one after all?
Back in the day he used to take me to all my gigs, he cut my CDs for me to put my backing tracks on, he’d do my sound, all the driving. He was like my tour manager when I was young, and if I did something wrong I’d get a telling off from him the same way as I would now from One Direction’s tour manger, Paul. Dad taught me so much.