Shock! Horror! It's all coming out now - and by 'all', we mean 'what really went on behind the scenes in One Direction' - since the release of Zayn Malik's recently-published 'autobiography', 'Zayn'.
During an interview discussing the book, the former boybander and now-solo star revealed that the reason he gave for wanting to leave 1D - 'to be a normal 22-year-old' - was a load of tosh.
ES magazine report that when he was asked about it, he 'smirked and leaned forward and said: "‘I’m going to ask you a question now – do you think I wrote that?
‘Like, look how it’s worded. I’m not a 35-year-old lawyer. I don’t write like that [he sits back, satisfied.]"
Of course, it's no huge surprise that 'a 35-year-old lawyer' prepared the statement for him; with the boyband still in operation at the time they had a brand to protect, and such meaningless, 'we're still all great friends' stuff is just part of the game.
Then again, such eyebrow-raising insinuations will always sell a few more books than 'I just got fed up of being on the road and being told what to do all time'...
In the book, Malik also reveals the moment that he decided to quit the band in March 2015, when his relationship with Little Mix star Perrie Edwards was 'breaking down' amid tabloid scrutiny - and says it was before a gig in Hong Kong, when he was "in f**king bits" about the decision. "I wasn’t going to spend another minute doing something which made me ill and which I no longer believed in,’ he said. "I couldn’t see that there was anything left for me to give or to gain from staying. It wasn’t worth it."
