This time nine years ago, five teenage boys' dreams were in tatters after being rejected from the X Factor .
But determined not to let a good-looking gang go to waste, show boss Simon Cowell and his genius decided to put solo hopefuls Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson together.
It took the lads just five minutes to agree to his plan and have another crack at the competition - this time in the groups category.
They would go on to be one of the most successful boybands of the century, selling out stadiums and dominating the charts for five years before splitting in an explosion of bitterness and animosity.
But with no experience of harmonies, group singing or even each other, even then Liam wondered what they were really getting into. "We had seen each other at Bootcamp and got on well, and Niall and I had shared a room. But we were competition then, and at the back of the minds we knew were against each other," Liam would later recall.
"So it was strange when we were put together and my first thought was, 'How are we going to make this work when we don't know each other? It was such a leap of faith." Desperate to catch up with the other bands, the newly-formed five-piece spent an intense two intense weeks practising in a bungalow at the bottom of Harry's step-dad's garden in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire.
But contrary to their bright white smiles and boyish banter, their very different personalities were already beginning to show, laying the foundations for the resentment, jealously and anger that would one day cause the group to implode.
"We used to be at each other’s throats on the X Factor," Louis admitted on their This Is Us DVD of his clashes with Liam.
"Whenever I wanted to do anything slightly mischievous, he was always the daddy."
"Me and Louis did not get on at all," Wolverhampton-born Liam agreed. "We were two completely different characters. There was one point where I literally wanted to whack him."
Nevertheless, they sailed through the live shows and came third in the final before scoring a record deal with Cowell, who for them made n exception of only signing the winning act.
A mysterious fall out
By the time they scored their first number one with What Makes You Beautiful in September 2011, Harry and Louis were living as housemates in a rented £3million North London flat in the same block where Ashley Cole and Cheryl once met.
Then suddenly at the start of 2012 they allegedly stopped talking and moved out.