Liam Payne was "ridiculed" when he first tried to break the music industry in 2008.
The 26-year-old singer found fame when he finished in third place on ‘The X Factor’ in 2010 as a member of One Direction, but had previously appeared on the UK talent competition two years earlier as a solo artist, when he failed to make it through to the live shows.
And now, the ‘Strip That Down’ hitmaker – who was just 14 when he first took part in the show 12 years ago – has revealed he was heckled in a McDonald’s for being an "X Factor reject" after his TV appearance.
He said: "From the age of 14 I’d been living a semi-famous lifestyle. Just at that moment I didn’t have any of the things that came with it for those two years.
"I went through two years of doing gigs and things by myself. Then after two years of doing that, people around realise that you haven’t got anywhere with your life and it became very sordid and very angry.
"People would ridicule me in the street and all sorts when I was, like, 15 or 16. I once went in McDonald’s when I was turning 16 and I went up to order my thing, went to sit down with the girl I was with at the time and a group of lads at the top of the stairs were like, ‘X Factor reject!’
"Then the whole restaurant was looking at me. It was a really hollow moment, that was like, ‘Oh right, now I know what it’s like to lose fame’."
Liam was able to prove his critics wrong when he took part in the show for a second time two years later, where he was one of five boys – alongside Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik – to be put into One Direction.
After a chart-topping five years together, the band went on hiatus in late 2015 following Zayn’s decision to quit earlier that year, and Liam has blamed the "demise" of the group on lack of sleep.
Speaking to Jordan Stephens on his Spotify exclusive podcast ‘Killing It’, he said: "We all just got on with it, you know, it was just a case of this is your job and this is what you do and then you just slowly spiralled into this thing. I mean, more than anything for us, I think the danger zone is in the band. And actually what probably caused the demise of it, towards the end, was just the tiredness more than anything. Everyone makes stupid decisions when they’re tired."
Liam Payne felt ‘ridiculed’ after first foray into music in 2008
