In the summer of 2010, Louis auditioned for the UK version of The X Factor for the third year in a row. He'd recently turned 18, and after having to retake his A-Level exams and flit between a string of minimum wage hospitality jobs, he figured he had nothing to lose. "I was never what you'd call 'book smart,'" he tells me now, stubbing his cigarette out in a nearby carved ivory ashtray and settling back onto his stool, his face relaxed but impassive. "What used to piss my mum off is that I could have been. I was that classic one from school who everyone said wasn't going to reach their full potential because they lark about too much. That was just who I was at the time."

He didn't really consider himself a "singer," either, but he knew he was confident enough to pull it off. His early teenage years had been spent dancing around his room to pop punk bands like Green Day ("I was given a DVD of Bullet in a Bible live as a gift and I became completely obsessed with it") so he used to emulate the American accent when he sang—something he says he still finds himself doing today. Aptly, the first band he played in was a Green Day tribute band when he was 14, but the other members kicked him out after a new boy came to the school and decided he wanted to replace him as singer. "Then I was like, 'I'm going to go on The X Factor now and fuck you all!'" he says, his face crinkling up with laughter for a moment, before turning serious again. "But I do remember that band as the first feeling of being... a performer, I suppose. I'd never really done anything like that before, and I was getting a bit of attention from it afterwards, so I was like OK, this is alright. This is cool. I can do this.'"