"Whenever I took him out, as a toddler, little old ladies would say: 'Oh, he's cute, he's going to break a few hearts," says Trisha Malik, remembering the not-too-distant past when her son was more Bradford baby than boyband heartthrob.

It's the first time she has spoken to the media since Zayn, as one-fifth of One Direction, shot to fame on the seventh series of X Factor. 

But things could have been very different, she says, if the 20-year-old had got his own way in the summer of 2010.

"On the morning of the audition Zayn didn't want to go," she recalls. "He chickened out, saying: 'Can't I just leave it?'"

Eventually, she coaxed him into going "just to see what happens"."