ZAYN Malik must have been going through hell.

The 23-year-old singer had flown home to the UK to perform at the Summertime Ball, a major radio station festival at Wembley Stadium, alongside Ariana Grande and Little Mix, which features his ex-fiance Perrie Edwards.

It was to be his coming out as a solo artist, his first big gig at home since releasing his debut record Mind Of Mine in March. Thousands of fans were pumped, the critics were primed.

But at the eleventh hour, Malik cancelled his set.

Instead of letting his team issue a sanitised sick note, Malik took to Instagram and told his 11.5 million followers exactly what was going on.

“To all those people who have been waiting to see me perform at the Capital Summertime Ball today. I flew into the UK last night to appear in my home country in front of my family, friends, and most importantly my UK fans,” he posted.

“Unfortunately my anxiety that has haunted me throughout the last few months around live performances has gotten the better of me ... with the magnitude of the event, I have suffered the worst anxiety of my career.

“I cannot apologise enough but I want to be honest with everyone who has patiently waited to see me, I promise I will do my best to make this up to everybody I’ve let down today.

“I know those who suffer anxiety will understand and I hope those who don’t can empathise with my situation.”

More musicians grapple with the nightmare of performance anxiety than fans will ever know.

Ellie Goulding was one of the first artists to sympathise with Malik, tweeting “Anxiety is real ... I know the feeling.”

Malik has made only a handful of television and radio event performances since releasing his album and while he admits his anxiety has flared in recent months, it would be reasonable to wonder if it was also partly behind his decision to quit One Direction in March 2015.

The British boy band had been on an almost endless world tour since they were created during the seventh series of the X Factor in 2010.

Malik had failed to finish 1D’s final Australian show in Perth just weeks before he announced he was leaving the group, citing illness.

It was often obvious that he wasn’t a natural-born performer when it came to promoting the world’s biggest boy band.

In interviews, he was shy and quietly-spoken, rarely offering unsolicited opinions unless a question was directed to him.

The reality of stepping onto the Wembley Stadium stage, the same massive arena One Direction had performed three shows in June 2014 during their Where We Are tour, fuelled his anxiety to the tipping point of panic.

Jessica Mauboy would also empathise with Malik’s dilemma of whether to risk losing it in front of thousands of people or admit to an all-too-human frailty.

She knows his pain. She suffered the first panic attack of her life at the Melbourne Cup last year, pulling out of performing Advance Australia Fair just minutes before she was due on the podium.

The pop sweetheart, who delivers effortless perfection almost every time she has a microphone in her hand, requires some quiet time before she sings to focus on the job. Most professional performers do.

But four minutes before her Melbourne Cup moment, a fight broke out between various parties around her about her outfit. She had no idea what was going on and the raised voices and bickering which resulted from a silly fashion fail provoked a wave of anxiety she couldn’t control.

“It was the scariest moment ever. Before every performance, you need at least half an hour to focus on what you are about to do, the walk-on and walk-off, the lyrics, how you are going to sing it, like the original or bring your own personal flavour to it, how are you going to make it the best,” she told me.

“People think it’s easy to get up there and perform one song but that one song is the hardest song to sing in Australia.”

Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns curtailed plans to tour off the back of his solo record Talk last year because of stage fright.

While he had played thousands of gigs as the frontman of Silverchair, like Malik he found the expectations of fans and critics of his solo efforts on the stage tough to reconcile, even though he pulled off two amazing concerts at the Sydney Opera House for the Vivid Live festival.

Johns prefers the sanctuary of the studio where he can create alone and with collaborators, recently working on songs for Flume and emerging DJ/producer duo Slumberjack.

He is currently in Los Angeles and believed to be back in the studio with his long-time mate Luke Steele.

Her father may have been one of the greatest live performers in rock history but Lisa-Marie Presley missed out on that strand of the family DNA.

It took her years to summons the courage to get on a stage and be judged against the accomplishments of her famous father.

“I was expected to fly but I had no runway when it came to finding a performance persona,” she said

“That has probably been my biggest learning process. But I ended up just diving off the high board and telling myself whatever happened, happened. And I just became myself.’’

Adele appears to have finally conquered the crippling stage fright which prevented her from performing for five years with her world tour in support of her chart-slaying record 25.

But she confessed she still suffered chronic nerves before her opening arena concert in Belfast in February. And described their effects in graphic detail.

“I’ve been f---ing sh---ing myself all day,” she told the crowd. “Bad bowel movements. I’ve had to have an Imodium.”

It has been five years since Australian fans have seen Sia perform, with her Big Day Out sets in 2011 among her last full concerts.

But she has said in the past it is not being on stage which makes her anxious but dealing with the travel and social interaction involved with touring which leaves her strung out.

Hiding under those glorious wigs seems to have alleviated some of her performance problems and her acclaimed sets at the Coachella festival this year indicated she was considering returning to the concert stage in some form in support of her latest album This Is Acting.

She announced a North American tour to kick off in September with her Australian fans now crossing fingers she will bring it here next year.

Barbra Streisand possesses one of the world’s most admired voices but she avoided sharing it with her adoring fans in concert for three decades because of stage fright.

She traced her phobia to a concert in New York’s Central Park in 1967, when she forgot the lyrics to one of her songs and the fear of repeating that mistake kept her away from live performance until 1993.

Streisand seems more at ease in concert now, recently announcing 10 shows to preview her new album Encore: Movie Partners Sings Broadway which features duets with Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Jamie Foxx and more.

Carly Simon has admitted to coming up with painful methods to curb her performance panic, wearing extra tight boots or stabbing herself with pins.

Anxious about going on after Smokey Robinson at a Bill Clinton tribute concert, she enlisted the help of the horn section of the orchestra to divert her nerves.

“They all took turns spanking me. During the last spank the curtain went up. The audience saw the aftermath, the sting on my face,” she said.