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“The others have always been… Like Niall, for example.
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As Tomlinson acknowledges, in One Direction he was seen by some as “forgettable, to a certain degree”. Why they gather themselves to “go again”. I’ve often wondered why the fringe members of boy bands do this to themselves. But there’s so much hurry-up-and-wait in this job. “I know, I know,” he says of the smoking. Slender, tracksuited, a little wan under his manicured facial hair, Tomlinson sits on a garden bench outside the photographer’s studio and works methodically through an entire pack of cigarettes. It is in roughly this position I find the 25-year-old, one afternoon earlier this summer. Here was a combatant you might expect to find curled up in a fox hole on the battlefield, pale and chain-smoking and wondering how much he really wanted in on such an unequal fight.
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And ranked last in any serious analysis, the most fitfully appreciated member of One Direction, was Louis Tomlinson. Liam Payne and Niall Horan – always second-tier members – were given middling chances. Big-lunged Zayn Malik was already out of the band by that time and had used his head start to good effect, preparing a solo album that went to No 1. Harry Styles – charming, a grinner – was best placed to succeed on his own. By the time One Direction announced they were to go on indefinite hiatus in 2015, many of us were familiar enough with the conventions of boy-band bloodsport to start picking favourites for the coming melee. Robbie Williams looked supreme in the Take That scrimmage, at least until Gary Barlow circled back, gathered up the other three, and made the fight a more compelling four-on-one. Justin Timberlake, after NSync, enjoyed the unsporting edge of natural talent and crushed his former colleagues. C oming out of a dissolving boy band must be a bit like being an entrant in one of those dystopian jungle fights – a Hunger Games-style event in which bandmates are scattered across an unknown terrain and challenged to slog their lonely route back to fame.