Jamie Searls, the young Corkman who plays Zayn Malik in popular One Direction tribute act Only One Direction, says his band will continue as a five piece despite Zayn's departure from the real thing.
Searls who is from Kinsale but now lives in London, tweeted yesterday that he was "off to the job centre".
However, speaking to Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ Radio One this morning, he said his tribute act plans to ignore reality and continue with the full line-up.
"I haven't slept a wink, I've been crying all night," Searls joked. "But you know what, we've got to move on. We're together three years and we have loads of dates booked in and we've still got some more coming up so we're going to go ahead."
Asked if he was actually a fan of One Direction, he said: "You know what, to start off with like everybody else I was a bit dubious about the lads but I think their last two albums are actually really, really credible and I enjoyed them."
Searls also said some fans of Only One Direction can such as fervent as fans of the real One Direction. "It's a bit mad. We've had people who's had tattoos of us, we get tweets, and people have gotten in touch with my family. It's a bit crazy but we enjoy it."
Searls releases his own song, Doing Time, on iTunes next week.
The guy who plays #Zayn in the 1D tribute act released his debut single overnight http://t.co/Re2sqYRWQT #ZaynMalik pic.twitter.com/LifqaLaP3b
— V.Point (@VPointNews) March 26, 2015