Croker crescendo for One Direction boys

They’re the world’s biggest boy band and maybe the world’s biggest band full stop.

How extraordinary that just four years ago the soon-to-be members of One Direction were anonymous strivers hoping to break into show business via Punch and Judy talent show The X Factor.

Not since The Beatles, surely, have a bunch of polite young men with interesting hair rocketed from obscurity to mega-fame so quickly and, it has often seemed, effortlessly.