Horan puts finishing touches to wax alter-ego

One Direction star Niall Horan has helped to put the finishing touches to his own waxwork face as the band’s hotly anticipated lifelike figures near completion in Madame Tussauds.

The boyband reached a new level of fame last month when the museum revealed that all five members would be immortalised as wax statues which will be exhibited across the globe.

Their alter-egos will be unveiled in London in two weeks for a three-month stint before being exhibited in New York and Sydney.

The sculptor in charge of Horan’s figure, Dave Burks, said yesterday his toughest task was getting the fidgety Irish singer to stay still during the portrait sitting.

“He couldn’t sit still which was a bit tricky for me because I needed him to obviously do the same pose. As soon as I showed him what a couple of the tools did, he dived straight in there and helped me sculpt himself,” he said.

“I had to stop him from doing his own portrait so I could finish him off.

“He just seemed really impressed with the process and was really interested in how we sculpted them.”

Burks, who was in charge of moulding the pop idol’s features, said they have captured the easygoing nature of the hugely popular heartthrob.

“He’s got a great face. He’s got a really nice sort of expression. It’s not a fully blown sort of a smile.

“He has a nice smirk with a little bit of cheekiness to the grin. From the first time we met him he was really excited about the process, really excited about having the portrait done.”

According to Madame Tussauds, the process for creating a figure is called “sitting”. It involves two sculptors, a photographer, and an assistant taking 200 measurements of the stars for three hours. Celebrities are never paid for the sitting, and sculpting one of their heads takes five weeks.

“We had a sitting with all the boys and measured and photographed them all,” said Burks. “Then we have been working on the photos and measurements ever since for about five weeks, finely crafting their portraits.”

The Mullingar singer said he is thrilled to be measured up for one of the figures which cost about €170,000 each. All five band members have been involved throughout the sculpting process, with hundreds of precise measurements taken of each one of them.

“We were super excited to find out that they were making us and that people felt we were worthy of figures,” said Niall.

He said it would be weird to think of fans kissing his wax likeness. “It’s kind of strange. They are quite fun to look at but I don’t know about kissing them.”