Footage of Liam Payne’s mother breaking down in tears while buying a cardboard cut out of her son so she didn’t miss him on tour has reemerged after the stars’ death.
Payne, 31, plunged to his death yesterday afternoon in Buenos Aires, having arrived there earlier this month to watch his ex-bandmate Niall Horen perform.
The clip, which is from the 2013 One Direction movie, shows both Liam’s mum Karen and his bandmate Louis’ mum out buying the merchandise of their global superstar sons as they both get emotional over them ‘being away for so long’.
Karen welled up as she said: ‘That’s my favourite hair on Liam [on the cardboard cutout], I love that one. I just shed tears just looking at him. You’ve only go the images. They become someone in like a newspaper or a magazine to you.
As she gushed: ‘I always believed that Liam would make it, but never this big. Never it my wildest dreams this big.’
As Johannah, Louis’ mum added: ‘I want a Louis one, and then at night I can just go and say goodnight to it.’
The English star rose to fame as a member of the boy band One Direction, alongside his former bandmates Harry, 30, Niall Horan, 31, Zayn Malik, 31, and Louis Tomlinson, 32.
Local police have since launched an investigation into the sudden death, as tributes flood in the wake of the tragedy.
A statement from local police said they arrived to the hotel after they were ‘informed of an aggressive man who may have been under the effects of drugs and alcohol’.
Payne was said to have been ‘acting erratically in the hotel lobby and smashed his laptop’ before he ‘had to be carried back to his room’, according to local media.
He had arrived in Argentina earlier this month with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy.
She left two days ago, but he stayed on, and around the same time his ex-fiancée Maya Henry instructed lawyers to issue Payne with a cease and desist letter after accusing him of repeatedly contacting her.
Back in 2017, following the birth of Liam’s only son Bear, Karen immediately took to Instagram to share her joy, as she boasted she was now ‘the happiest grandmother’ to ‘the most beautiful grandson,’ right in time for Mother’s Day.
Clearly overcome with joy, she wrote to her 230,000 followers: ‘Finally I can boast that I am a grandmother! The happiest grandmother. I’m very proud of my children.’
Admitting the week following the birth had been a rollercoaster of emotions, she continued: ‘Everything I’ve been doing lately is crying, because I’m very happy, now I have the most beautiful grandson in the world… Thanks God.’
Before the singer’s death, he had stared a final Snapchat post showed him happily posing with his partner Kate Cassidy as they looked into a mirror. A picture originally taken last August.
Further posts from the final moments of the star’s life showed him enjoying lunch in his hotel room, where he revealed the pair had been ‘waking up at 1pm every day’ and deciding on Forest Gump as a Halloween costume.