Mullingar superstar Niall Horan has admitted that he gets ‘more Irish’ when he is away on tour.
The solo star is famous all over the world after achieving huge success with One Direction, after appearing on the X Factor ten years ago.
As he travels from continent to continent, he realised that when he is far away from home his Irish accent becomes stronger.
He said: “I’m like, as you probably recognise, the biggest flag waver of all time. I’m the fella standing with the pole at the front of the St Patrick’s Day parade.
“When you’re young, you can’t wait to get out of this place. ‘This is a hole in the ground,’ that’s what you’re thinking when you’re 15 and you don’t know what you want to do with your life and you’re in a small town, blah blah blah.
“The minute that changes and you do what I’ve done over the last 10 years, the more Irish become.
“I found my Irish accent actually getting stronger. Everywhere I go, I’m the Irish fella.
“If I’m on a late night talk show in America, or presenting a morning TV show in Australia, I’m the Irish fella, which is great for me, and I love it.”
Horan also spoke about his dream Irish gig venues and admitted that a homecoming show in Mullingar might be out of the question.
He said: “There was talk about a Mullingar show for a while actually, they just couldn’t fit us in.
“I would love to do, it would be unreal to do Malahide Castle or something outdoorsy, I’d love to play the Aviva, I think Croker might be way out of reach.
“I would like to do something massive at some point maybe as a one-off. It won’t be this year, I’ll try and get back into the arena this year if they’ll let me in the doors.
“And then at some point after that I think I’d like to do something big.
“Whether I can sell it or not is another story but that’s where the agents are good, they’ll be able to tell me if I can or not.
“There’d be no point putting on a home gig and it falling around my legs.”
Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling