A house party with One Direction looks great fun, and a super-slick video invite sends thousands of screaming Directionettes into a predictable frenzy as their arena tour hits Glasgow.
The marriage proposals are still coming 90 minutes later, but the reality of the five youngsters is not quite the teenage dream their PR machine would have us believe.
While baby-faced favourite Niall works his socks off jumping around the stage and Liam and Louis make the effort to bop about and smile, Harry peacocks around the stage until someone is inspired to throw a shoe at his crotch and Zayn's attempt at moody heartthrob ends up being more sulky teen who thinks he's too cool for the school disco. In short, they are a bit too much like actual teenage boys to live up to the perfect image.
Initially, it's hard to hear their singing over the band, and their facial contortions seem to bear little relation to what's coming out of the speakers, but as the night goes on the gang have the chance to show they've come quite a way since a handful of decidedly average solo auditions for X Factor.
An audience singalong to album track Moments falls flat – perhaps because the iTunes generation just keep the hits on shuffle – but the lads put in a commendable shift of nearly two hours, throwing a decent cover of Teenage Dirtbag in for good measure, and while it isn't rolled out until past a few bedtimes and after some frustratingly rambling thank-yous, a joyful What Makes You Beautiful sends everyone else home on a high.
HHH
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article