Niall Horan calls One Direction's debut concert 'worst night of my life'

Niall Horan doesn't like to talk about One Direction's first-ever gig because it was "a disaster".

The Irish singer was put together with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik to form the hit boyband on U.K. reality show The X Factor in 2010, and in September 2011 they released their first single What Makes You Beautiful, which hit the top of the charts around the world.

The band played their first show at the Watford Colosseum in London a few months later and although they had performed songs live together on the reality show, the five-piece were not prepared for a full-length concert.

"I never want to talk about that gig again. Worst night of my life. The worst One Direction show ever," Niall told the BBC. "We've refused to talk about it ever since... It was a disaster. We were just a joke.

"Anything we rehearsed just went out the window. It was our first ever gig and we just didn't know what the (expletive) was going on."

The 24-year-old admitted the second gig was much better, and they got plenty of opportunity to improve as the band went on to sell out stadiums worldwide before they went on hiatus in 2016.

Niall is currently on his own solo tour and he deliberately picked smaller venues to give his shows a more intimate feel.

"It's brilliant, especially with the type of music I'm doing," he says. "You feel like you're in someone's living room," he explained. "With One Direction, we were doing five or six kilometers a night, running around the stage like lunatics. There's none of that now. I'll probably put on a bit of weight, standing still and playing guitar all the time!"

The singer has already had solo hits with This Town and Slow Hands but he has yet to get a number one, and he admits it would be a dream for his new single, Too Much To Ask, to reach the top spot following its release on Friday (15Sep17).