Liam Payne and Cheryl Cole's awkward first X Factor encounter

An uncomfortable Liam Payne has been forced to relive his very public first meeting with girlfriend and mother to his child, fellow singer Cheryl.

The One Direction star was confronted with footage from his 2008 X Factor audition during an interview with Graham Norton over the weekend. It was on X Factor that One Direction formed, soon becoming one of the biggest pop groups of the past decade.

Payne was an unknown 14-year-old at the time, auditioning for a panel of judges including 24-year-old Cheryl, a UK pop superstar thanks to her role in chart-topping group Girls Aloud.

Payne furnished his rendition of Fly Me To The Moon with a wink aimed in Cheryl's direction, and she was full of praise for the aspiring singer.

"I think you're really cute ... you've got charisma," she told him, letting him through to the next round of auditions.

Flash forward almost a decade, and the pair - now 33 and 23 respectively - have been a couple since mid-2016, and are new parents to a son, Bear, born in March.

The footage of their first encounter lives on forever on YouTube, but when Norton brought up their unusual meet-cute, Payne couldn't hide his discomfort.

"I'm going to be sleeping here tonight if we go into these details, she doesn't like to talk about this bit," he warned of his absent partner.

Payne loosened up after the audition footage was played.

"When I got back to school, I got a real ribbing for winking at Cheryl. Cut to my 23rd birthday party and here we are together, and my friends are just mute in the corner," he laughed.

"And now we've got a baby, Bear. So it all makes perfect sense!"

Liam on Cheryl

In an interview on Nova last week, Payne reflected further on the "crazy" way he met the eventual mother of his child.

"It's so crazy, it's weird. I remember being interviewed by one of the people on X Factor afterwards, and they were asking about how she'd called me cute - I didn't really think anything of it at the time. Now I've grown up and ... we have a child."