The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew
09 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What role did your mother play in your life?
Not really ever spoke about it in depth like this. Nothing prepares you in life for those kind of situations. But I felt like I'd failed at the time. That's the truth. And it's still something that I'm unpacking still, to be honest. Louis, we spoke to your sister, Lottie, about this. Would you like to see it? I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer.
I grew up in a working class town. Seven of us living in a three bed house. My mum used to work a lot of nights. She had to play dad as well. So I would have to get my sisters ready for school. So people in Doncaster didn't get those opportunities. And then the X Factor came along. I auditioned three times. The first time I failed, the second time I failed.
I remember thinking, this is utterly crushing. Just sobbing to me more. But she made me feel like I could do anything. So instead of running away, it was like, I know I deserve it. I know I can. So how do I relearn confidence and go for a third time? When I think about what happened in the preceding five or six years, it is crazy. Yeah.
And the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality. And part of growing up in a working class town, I have this guilt.
Chapter 2: How did your upbringing influence your perspective on fame?
for the success and money that I've earned. And then personal worth within the band, I really, really struggled with. But you co-wrote 15 platinum singles. But I wanted to do more. But mostly for me, I didn't realize the value of family time. And the more time I spent at the band, the more time I spent away from home. Like two of my sisters who are identical twins.
I've never told them this, but I wasn't confident enough to tell them apart. That shows just how little I was at home. And then it ends. And what was really strange was being 24 years old, realizing that the only way is down from it. Louis, there's so many things that happened in your life. How does a young man grieve?
It's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to because I cannot have that define me. The floor is yours. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us.
And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Louis, to understand you, what is the earliest context that I need?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did you face during your journey on The X Factor?
Something that played a massive role for me in my life was the fact that maybe for the first four or five years of my life, it was just me and my mum. My first proper memories are just kind of having really kind of nice and warm and really emotional conversations with my mum. I think something that I'm kind of proud of is that I'm
Chapter 4: How did you cope with grief after losing loved ones?
I'm, I find it easy to be emotional and I kind of like talking about my feelings and I like getting into conversation with the people about that. And that was definitely something that she instilled in me from, from like a really young age and something that still definitely really helps me today, especially, you know, navigating through the life.
Like I have those kinds of things have been able to talk about your emotions and your feelings, like vitally important, actually, for the job that I do mentally, you know? So your, your father wasn't around. He, your biological father left soon after you were born. Yeah, it's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to. Yeah, he wasn't involved in my life at all.
I've met him like three times ever. So your mother played, I guess, several roles in your life. Yeah, my mum was always really good at that. I think she realised the fact that my dad wasn't going to be around, that she had to play dad as well. And she had this kind of mischievous instinct in her mum and definitely kind of inspired some of that.
And part of that was her being her, but part of that was also trying to play that kind of dad role, you know, where you kind of lark about and... encouraged to do kind of silly things that aren't going to hurt, you know. She was just, like, I could get emotional. She's just the best woman I ever knew, definitely.
And also just I feel so vitally, like, lucky to be able to have her as my mentor because she just, everything that I look to in, like, friends and partners, et cetera, they're the kind of things that she embodied, really. And you had siblings. Lots of them. Yeah, lots of them. So when I grew up, I kind of like the bulk of my childhood. There was seven of us living in a three bed house.
I've got a little bit better at it. One thing I really have struggled with is being on my own. And the more I've thought about that as I've got a bit older, it's because I just never had an opportunity to be when I was young. When you live in a house that, you know, it's three bedroom, there's seven people living in it. You're literally all living on top of each other. And I loved that.
Like it was like one of the best things that ever happened to me being an older brother. Like I just, it's just, it's like one of the definitions of my purpose, I would say. I just like to look after people, man. So like being an older brother is like a role I feel like I was always supposed to do.
And then I think even, you know, as we move through life and a couple of things got more challenging, that role has become more prevalent, definitely. I was fortunate enough to speak to quite a few people that have known you over the years. I heard. That was cool. That was cool. Yeah. And I was just listening to some of the recordings of those conversations. Like Nizam. Yeah.
He's your childhood best friend. Yeah. Cal, who's your photographer and videographer. Yeah. Love Cal. Throughout the years. And Lottie, who's your youngest sister, six years younger. Mm-hmm. And it's interesting that one of the things they all came back to is that you really haven't changed. I appreciate that. But that's what they said.
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Chapter 5: How did Louis cope with his mother's death?
Oh, yeah, they're lovely. I love this one. I love this one. This is cute. Really cute. Yeah, I got a very similar picture to this by my bedside table at home in my bedroom. About a year after you leave One Direction, your mother passes away from leukemia.
Thinking about the timing of all these events, thinking about the shock of being thrown into a very different life, one without the boy band around you, and then your mother getting leukemia, which people don't know is the 12th most common form of cancer. She passes away at age 42. The timing of all these things is quite unthinkable to me because there's so much transition in your life.
I'm just terribly sorry. I appreciate you saying that. I don't really have anything else to say other than just understanding what she meant to you and the role she had in your life.
Chapter 6: What challenges did Louis face after losing his sister?
I'm terribly sorry. There was definitely, as you said, the timing. Obviously, there's no good time for anything like this, but I think the timing, that's what created a bit of... It didn't last too long. I want to say maybe six months, but of true resentment for the world, like real resentment. Just feeling really hard done by...
You know, it's the kind of one thing I remember about grief when you're in the midst of it. You could stub your toe, right? And something like that is utterly unjust. Now, that's something you might have done. None of this ever happened. You stub your toe. It'd be annoying, but you just get over it. Little things like that I really, really struggled with when I was grieving.
So it's things that should work a certain way that don't. There's a zip on my jacket that won't quite go all the way up. Real, micro, non-important little things, right? But I think because of the weight of the stuff that had happened, there was just... Yeah, there was a moment in my life, as I said, for about six months where it just felt like I couldn't win. In fact, I could only lose.
So that's where even just stubbing your toe, you'd be like, another fucking thing. Now, it sounds stupid to say, but once you're met with these... When you're met with that kind of mindset of feeling hard done by, the smallest things definitely can amplify that. When did you hear that she was sick? I got friendly with a footballer called Jamie Vardy and he'd invited me to his wedding.
So I was at the wedding and it was like the party afterwards and it was like 10pm. At this point, I'd already had quite a few vodka red bulls, which was not ideal for the weight of the conversation. My mum called me. I was stood outside. It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for my mum to call me, so I wasn't worried or anything like that. She called me like most days, if not every day.
And then she told me. And you know what it's like, anything like this in life, when you hear something like that carries any kind of weight, like the first 10 thoughts are either it can't be true. Maybe she's got it wrong. Maybe the doctors have got it wrong. Just all these stages of denial before actually, you know, even embracing the thought. It wasn't really, it wasn't kind of really like me.
I didn't even feel like it was like a cry for help at the time. But that night I got absolutely battered. I got really, really drunk. There'll be nights where, you know, and this has been nights in the past where I'll have a little bit too much to drink. More from not knowing my limit. But in this kind of situation, it's not something I've ever really used drink for, to be honest.
But I just, that was, I felt the only way just to completely escape that moment in that, in that, at that night.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How did Liam Payne's death impact Louis?
My guess would be 18 months. I think it might have been quicker than that. The anniversary of her death, I get texts all the time on whenever the anniversary is and someone will say, thinking of you today. And it's only at that point that I know that that's the day. Because it's deleted from my brain. She passes because you don't have a... Your biological father isn't around.
You're very much at that point, you know, you're the... In some respects, you're the father of lots of siblings because you're the big brother. You went out on stage three days after her death for an X Factor performance. From what I understand from Lottie, she very much pushed you to do that before she passed away and told you that you... you needed to do that performance.
I'll never forget the X Factor final performance that he did with Steve Aoki when my mum had only passed away a couple of days before, which I still can't believe he even had the strength to do. But my mum was just so proud of him and especially him starting his solo career. Even in her final days, she was like, if I don't make it, I still want you to do this performance.
And when she did pass, we were like, there's no way, no one would have expected him to do it. but he wanted to do it for her.
And I knew exactly what that was. I knew why she was telling me. She was telling me because she would have hated something that she, something that had happened to her affect my career and my life as a person. I would do it again for her. That's, I don't think I'll ever have a more challenging time in my life than those three and a half minutes on stage. I did it only for her.
I didn't, I didn't, it's not something I look back on and go, I'm really, Proud. I am proud that I did that, but that you almost say those kind of things when you want to do something, right? I'm really proud that I did that. That wasn't, it felt like it was taken out of my hands. I didn't want her to have that guilt, but it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
Like, obviously, like I just, it was, it was horrible. And also the song alluded to, the song was called Just Hold On. It's weird how empowering those moments are.
I can sit here now and comfortably say that the chance, now obviously they could, but the chances of my life being as dark as it was in those three minutes alone, like I would be desperately unlucky to ever be in a situation like that again, where I was so young, I was in a situation where, as you said, all the timing was, and then I felt like I'd...
you know, been encouraged to go on stage, but it wasn't really something that I did, that I wanted to do. It puts everything into perspective, you know? So like, like nothing's going to get as hard as that. So I think it, there's, there's times where my job will weigh me down even like today, you know, not today, but I mean, in this current head. And yeah,
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Chapter 8: What does Louis' new album represent in his life?
But these were fleeting moments because there was too much to do for my sisters. There was too much to do for my nan and grandad. There was too much to do for me family where it gave me something to do. It gave me a true purpose. It gave me a reason in the darkest days to get out of bed and confidently get out of bed. Because there was stuff that needed to be done.
And at that time, my sisters were so, so, so young. And I was so terrified of what kind of effect that would have on them, you know, growing up. And luckily, they impressed me every day. They're amazing, amazing women. My role felt like... the strong one in that situation. And someone who's willing to give someone, you know, Daisy had called me and she'd be really upset.
And by the end of the call, she can just see the glimpse of a glass half full. That was my job, you know. The grief became less relevant because of the need to look after everyone else. Like sometimes you might get asked like, you know, what advice would you give to people with grief? It's just an impossible question to answer just because I'm still feeling it.
And the interesting thing about that is you could spend two weeks with me and you never knew me and you never knew my life story. Never in a million years would you think, I don't carry myself like that. I'm not someone who's down the dumps like that. But it's still there. It will never go away. What are the symptoms of it still being there?
There is like this air of, I suppose, air of unpredictable. This feeling of And that's sometimes where my positivity comes from too. Like things could change tomorrow. So I suppose that is, and that kind of jeopardy and that kind of idea, that's how I would interpret it. Because for any grief that I've experienced, it has been relatively quick.
I haven't really had a lot of time to compute these kind of ideas. Does that create a certain anxiety with life and a certain worry for life that, you know, if the foundations are uncertain and bad news can arrive at any moment, one would, you know, that seems like the breeding ground of worry and anxiety.
I actually wrote that down earlier because when we were speaking earlier, you said, I wasn't a worrier back then when you're talking about your childhood.
Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't used to be a worrier. Now, I'm sure most people can say that, right? Your worry levels, or at least for most people, you have less worry when you're younger. You haven't quite understood all your emotions yet, really. Do you have anxiety? Do you struggle with it? Yeah, I experience it all the time. Is it something that kind of controls me? No.
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