Transcript of Tributes paid to One Direction star Liam Payne who has died aged 31 | BBC News

We're going to start with the developing news from Argentina, Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer, has died at the age of 31. Local police say the British musician's body was found outside a hotel. The authorities there have confirmed he died after falling from the building's third floor. Born in the UK, Liam Payne rose to global stardom with band members Harry Stiles, Niall Horan, Zane Malik, and Louis Tomlinson. It's part of the teenage band One Direction. How many fans gathered outside the hotel doors for hours in Buenos Aires before hosting a vigil outside? They're in tributes there. Our culture correspondent Charlotte Gallica reports.

I've been working Liam Payne, a music superstar who found Fame while just a teenager.

He lived his entire adult life in the spotlight, sometimes struggling with the pressures of celebrity. This is the hotel in Buenos Aires, where police say the singer felt his death from a third floor balcony. Officers were already on the scene, following reports of an aggressive man who may have been under the effects of drugs and alcohol. Outside the hotel, fans were in disbelief.

I needed to be here. I find out the news in my home after I come from the homework, and I needed to be here to present and know this is real, to know this is real.

When I read about this, my heart stopped for a second. I couldn't believe it, and I felt really saddened by the news. So as quickly as I could, I took the bus and I came here.

It's such a loss. I'm 20 years old, and One Direction has been a part of me since I was eight years old, and they meant a lot to me, every one of them.

Morning, everybody.

He'd posted on social media that it was a lovely day in Argentina. This was Liam Payne at 14, auditioning on X Factor in 2008 for the first time.

Fly me to the moon.

Two years later, he was back again. Fly me a river. And soon to become one-fifth of a pop music phenomenon.

You don't know you're beautiful.

One Direction. Liam, Harry Style, Zane Mallet, Niall Horan, and Louis Tomlinson, released Hit After Hit, toured the world, and had millions of devoted fans. In 2016, they went on an indefinite hiatus. Liam, like his bandmates, launched a solo career and had a child with the Girls Aloud singer Sheryl. To the outside world, he was living the pop star dream, but Liam also struggled with his mental health and addiction to alcohol.

The problem we had in the band, and I don't blame anybody for this, I don't want to seem like I'm whining or moan, Oh, my God, look at my life, whatever. But it feels to me like when we were in the band, the best way to secure for us because of how big it got was just lock us in our rooms. And of course, what's in the room? Minibar. So at a certain point, I thought, Well, I'm going to have a party for one. And that just seemed to carry on throughout many years of my life. And then you look back, how long you've been drinking this before. You're like, Jesus Christ, that's a long time. Even for someone who's as young as I was.

He remained close to his bandmates. Just a few weeks ago, he was pictured dancing at a Nile Horon concert. One Direction fan's long through reunion. Today, those fans are mourning the death of their music icon. Charlotte Gallagher, BBC News.

Entertainment journalist, Joshua Ron, met Liam Payne several times and said he was completely shocked when he heard he died.

I was in almost disbelief when I first heard the news. I thought, like many people, Surely it can't be real. Then I checked all the news sources and the news agency. When on top of TMZ, they were reporting it, I said, Oh, this is very serious now. That's the thing. It's one of those situations where 31 years old is such a young age. The one word to describe this is tragic. This clearly is a tragic incident. We're hearing the reports from Buenos Aires about potential drug or alcohol usage. We know that he had his issues throughout his life. We I know that in 2022, at the end of 2022, he went to rehab for 100 days. He was very transparent about his issues. It's just sad news all around. But that's the thing. When I met Liam Payne, the word transparent is a very good word to describe him. He was very humble when I spoke to him. I first spoke to him back, I believe it was in 2017, just after Sheryl gave birth to Bear, and I asked him, I said, How is Baby Bear? What's it like watching him grow? And bless him, he was just this gushing dad.

It was very clear that he had so much love for his family. He was gushing over Sheryl, and this was in the early stages as well of their solo careers. They'd not long gone on this hiatus. We didn't know at that point that it would be this indefinite hiatus. And I asked him, You guys, you're launching launching solo careers. Do you feel like you're in competition with each other? And he says, Well, it's not just each other. The charts are a competition. We're up against the likes of Drake and Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. So it's a big competition all around for all of us. And that's the thing about him. It was very clear that actually he didn't want to speak about any rivalry with the rest of the One Direction people like Niall Horan and Harry styles. And it's actually very clear, especially because he was in Argentina to support Niall Hoare, and it was very clear that actually he had so much love for his former One Direction bandmate. So as I said, 31 years old, it's a tragic, tragic age to lose someone, especially someone as famous as this.

Thanks to Joshua Ron for that. And I just want to let you know that there is a live page running on the BBC News website and BBC News app with all the latest tributes coming in from different stars right around the world. So do keep across that. Now, though, I want to speak to Mark Savage, our entertainment correspondent, our music correspondent. And Mark, just talk us through some of the reaction there's been so far to this.

Yes, well, as we've seen, there are fans in tears outside the hotel where Liam Payne died yesterday in Argentina. And there's been a huge outpouring of grief, of shock online. And some of the people who knew Liam best have been posting tributes on social media. The singer Ollie Mears, who was also a contestant on The X-Factor, where Liam found Fame, said that Liam shared the same passions as me. He had the same dreams, so to see his life and so young hit hard. He said he was truly devastated by the news. German O'Leary, the TV presenter who presented the X-Factor, remembered Liam turning up at the age of 14 and blowing the judges away with his rendition of Frank Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon. Again, he said that he was sending condolences to his loved ones. In the last hour, Harry Stiles, the bandmate who joined Liam Payne in One Direction, his mother has posted a tribute on social media, just a simple picture of William with the words just a boy. I think a lot of people are in shock that someone so young, 31 years old, could die in such a tragic way.

It's difficult to overstate just how big One Direction were at some point and known right around the world.

Yes. They're one of the last big boy bands to have a global impact. For those five years, they were active from 2010 to 2015. They sold 70 million records around the world and played in almost every country to millions and millions of fans. Liam was known as the more approachable of the members. He was always the one that would take time to greet fans outside hotels. He was very down to Earth, very softly spoken. At the times that I met him, he was incredibly sincere about the love that they had for the fans, for the debt of gratitude that they owed him. But also he was a really careful thinker about music. It's probably not been that well-spoken about today, but he co-wrote half of the songs on the last two One Direction albums. And those are huge global hits like Steal My Girl and history. He was really invested in the songwriting. When he left the band, he took the opportunity to work with some of the biggest artists in the world, people like Ed Sheeran, the rapper, and Quavo from the band Migos, the Latin music star, Jay Balvin. You can see from the breadth of those people that he worked with, just how interested he was in all different genres of music, and that came across in his solo work.

Mark, thank you very much for that. Thank you.

Thank you.