Liam Payne compares One Direction fame to creating a 'big orange' in bizarre fruit analogy

Liam Payne has compared being in One Direction to creating a giant orange.

The 24-year-old singer was opening up about creating a legacy with the boy band when he made the fruity analogy.

Speaking to Legend he said: “The success we saw was how many people would turn up at a concert. And then seeing other people selling out these venues, select groups of people, and we played there so many times – like the Rose Bowl three times in a row. That’s nuts!

“But even when you read it in the paper, like ‘the world’s biggest boy band’ – we did something that was ‘the world’s biggest’. It doesn’t really matter what it was. Like, if I made the world’s biggest orange, I’d be quite happy about that, you know what I mean? You can’t top that.”

Payne was cobbled together with Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson to form One Direction on The X Factor in 2010.

Payne, who recently launched a solo career, said he pretended to be someone else during the height of their fame, something he said drove him “nuts”.

He said: “Fame made me a little bit nuts and distracted me a lot from the person I was. I put on a front that wasn’t really me. But now that I’ve had my time away, you slowly, naturally become the person you were before you started, but with a lot more knowledge. So I feel a lot more myself than I ever did before.

“I remember the day we finished, because of the place I was in, I was quite happy that we had a break. I said to the person with me at the time, ‘Thank god I don’t have to play that person again for a long time’. It was exhausting and I couldn’t keep up with myself.”

Payne is now focused on the “tiny legacy” he has created with girlfriend Cheryl. The celebrity couple welcomed their first child together, son Bear, last March.

He said fatherhood was “totally different” to what he expected and that he has struggled at times.

“Becoming a dad is difficult and I think a lot of people struggle,” he said. “Dads don’t really speak about it until you’re part of the club and then they’ll go, ‘Oh, wait for this, that’s in the post!’ and you’re all like, ‘Oh, thanks for the warning!’”