The one thing we know about Mark Wahlberg is that, to him, the workout is everything. He wakes up at 2.30am each morning just to squeeze in enough daily hours in the gym.

So when Wahlberg picks a workout partner, second-best is not an option. He needs someone who is willing to burn some serious self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, sorry, calories. His latest choice is Wolverhampton’s Liam Payne, who this week posted a montage of their session pumping iron to Twitter.

The past fortnight has also seen Payne reveal that he auditioned for Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story and post a respectful tribute to his ex-girlfriend Cheryl on Mothers’ Day. To the casual observer, it seems as if he is becoming a kind of A-list Hollywood celebrity with a sense of self-awareness. Which is confusing.

Payne, you will remember, first came to our attention as the blob of grey matter who, alongside four human boys, formed One Direction. Personality-wise, he was always a little difficult to tell apart from his Madame Tussauds waxwork. It seemed as if he came out of the womb a brusque-but-fair Midlands dad. You can imagine his first words were: “Take your cardigan off, otherwise you won’t feel the benefit when you go outside.”

But Cheryl (née Tweedy, née Fernandez-Versani, now just née-wey-am-I-changing-me-name-ageen) encouraged him to be a bit cooler. It wasn’t pretty. Payne couldn’t shake his old soul and so had the distinct vibe of a dad tagging along to his daughter’s party just to check out the atmosphere. He began using the word “dope” a lot and incorrectly. He covered his body in tattoos of things he presumably found on BrainyQuote.com and then misremembered, including “Somewhere is a place that nobody knows” and “Everything I wanted but nothing I’ll ever need”.

He tried to become more sexual, more masculine, but got it badly wrong: his energy was more like that of a budget-option hen-night stripper who once performed as “Liam Pain” in a male erotic troupe called Blond Erection.

Eventually, Cheryl had to get rid and that’s where things get exciting because breakups are like data leaks (just call them the Paranoid Papers). Now that your partner has stopped trying to impress you, everything you suspected about them during your relationship is suddenly out in the open: no more pretending they don’t want to sleep with her from work or that they are not a huge Muse fan. They become their true selves. So if that s what Liam was like when he was with Cheryl, how bad could things get on his own?

When Payne first had a taste of singledom he continued his Benjamin Button descent into teenage rebellion. He reportedly had a fling with the then 18-year-old Instagram model Maya Henry who he first met at a 1D meet-and-greet when she was 15.

You wouldn’t have known Payne had been in contact with anyone at all from his Instagram, though, where he posted a near constant stream of joyless solo selfies of him mugging to camera in a leather jacket, pictures so obviously intended to be reused in an online dating profile that he might as well have included his age and hobbies in the mise-en-scène.

He also appeared to get very into Formula E, and you can see why. It’s a pursuit that has all the hallmarks of things that are flashy and modern – fast cars, wealth, the letter “e” – and yet, when you scratch the surface, all you find are old grumbling carburettor enthusiasts. It is Liam Payne in sport form. Even when he tried to Bieberly lash out at his own fans it didn’t quite work. When he complained about people asking if One Direction will get back together he tweeted: “I get asked this ridiculous question 500x a day (exaggeration)” – that final parenthesis just letting people know he has gone completely off the rails.

His musical attempts at credibility have also fallen short. The current trendy sound in the charts is reggaeton-influenced pop performed by mostly South American rappers. Never one to say, “Oh, this trend probably doesn’t involve me”, Payne made his own attempt with a song called Familiar. But he pronounced it “familia” in lyrics such as, “Can we get famili-famili-famili-familiar … let me be the one to fill it up”, like someone delivering a particularly embarrassing Spanish GCSE oral exam.

Yet we have to admit that not everything Payne has done has been quite so cringey. It’s widely believed that he is dating Naomi Campbell, which is quite impressive for someone who seems like he would flinch at a car backfiring, nevermind romance with the most no-nonsense living celebrity in the world. The couple caroused till dawn at a New Year’s Eve beach party in Ghana and then, weeks later, Naomi started posting things such as “beautiful soul” on Payne’s topless selfies, a phrase that is really only used when you’re being dumped or, post-coitally, by older lovers. When the Sun splashed on the story in February it came with the headline “Liam: My Mind Blowing Sex With Naomi” – and it is easy to imagine Payne as the little emoji with his head exploding.

Naomi has refused to confirm the rumours but they have been repeatedly spotted together. And she is clearly teaching him a few useful tips. For example, quick pop quiz: who did Payne say the following about on his Instagram last month: “Happy birthday to one of the most beautiful humans I know … I haven’t known you an awful long time but your [sic] already one of my dearest friends”?

Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. It was actually the British Vogue editor Edward Enninful. Might it be that Naomi is giving Liam better advice on how to become trendy than Cheryl did? Fewer tattoos, more schmooze, darling.

As for West Side Story, Payne didn’t end up with a role in the film, but he did get down to the final five and spent some time performing for Spielberg himself. Not bad for someone who once flirted with working under the moniker “Big Payno” for his solo ventures.

So either the world has got lamer, or perhaps Payne is finally working himself out. Who knows, maybe one day the student will become the teacher and he will be the one to finally tell Wahlberg that you can only get so muscly before it starts to look weird.

Careful with that wax, Joanne



Dani Dyer (right) with her mum, Joanne (left). What Danny Dyer (centre) thinks of his daughter’s depilatory regime is not recorded. Photograph: Scott Garfitt/Rex/Shutterstock

Just time for a quick flick through Dani Dyer’s new “literally” tome, What Would Dani Do?. While most of the pages are filled with exercise and style tips that you could find in any copy of Mizz magazine, there are a few more sensitive pages about life in the Dyer household.

“No part of my body is sacred with my mum,” writes Dyer, “she even insists on waxing my Nunnie for me. She seems to think she can do it better than anyone else.”

Now that’s an interesting claim from mum Joanne, who is a trained financial adviser but not, as far as we know, a beautician. Still, let’s put our faith in her being the best in the world, as we read on.

“I went back home the other night for some tea and she ended up making me get on all fours while she did it in the lounge. It really hurt! I was having to take sips of wine to numb the pain while my poor sister Sunnie was trying to watch TV!”

Is it possible that Joanne is actually not providing a superlative waxing experience? Are there not places you can go and, for a small fee, be waxed lying down on your back by someone who isn’t a blood relative? Although we suppose in a family where dad and eldest daughter are called Danny/Dani, and apparently they’ve called the vagina “Nunnie” but their other daughter “Sunnie”, boundaries can’t be much of an issue.