Liam Payne told off by Empire State Building staff

Pop star Liam Payne has received a dressing down from officials at the Empire State Building after taking aim at them on Twitter.com over a mystery incident.

The One Direction singer visited the tourist attraction in New York with members of his family - and it appears he had a run-in with staff.

He took to Twitter.com to blast the security team, writing, "Just been to the Empire State Building had a great time except… The security detail, in particular the senior security supervisor, was arrogant, unprofessional and extremely disrespectful to my family."

He certainly wasn't expecting Empire State Building bosses to respond - but they did.

One official tweeted, "@Real_Liam_Payne bad behavior not accepted at ESB. No, our security does not know who you are, and does not care."

Payne has since attempted to climb back into the staff at the skyscraper's good books with a series of grovelling tweets.

In one he writes, "Seems there was a bit of a mix up when I was at the empire state. Its all good. Sorry for confusion looking fwd (forward) to next timeeeee!" and he later added, "I would like to formally apologize to the Empire State Building security team and its owners for our misunderstanding the other night... I didn't mean to cause anyone any problems and hope that I can come back again for a visit again in the future."

There's no word on what the misunderstanding was.