EX-BOYBAND IDOL GROWS INTO LIFE AS A DAD

We were kids in 1D... My daughter's brought the colour back into my life

- JAMES DESBOROUGH and JESSICA BOULTON

ZAYN Malik is a changed man. The teenager we watched on The X Factor is long gone. And the tortured youngster who struggled with the fame of One Direction is also a distant memory. The reason for both is the same - daughter Khai.

Because becoming a father has finally given Zayn some of the peace he has craved since he first auditioned for Simon Cowell back in 2010.

"I feel like my daughter brought that colour back in my life," said smitten Zayn, 31. "She just makes me happy. I have so much love in me that I didn't have before she was born.

"She laughs all day. She wants to do the silliest things and she gains so much excitement from it. She just has a whole fresh perspective on life that had somewhat become grey for me."

It's the news fans have wanted to hear for years.

Zayn had been mired in scandals. In 2015, he shocked fans by quitting ID, blaming stress and saying he wanted to be a "normal 22-year-old".

He had success with a No.1 solo single, Pillow Talk, and album Made In Mind before his supermodel girlfriend Gigi Hadid completed what appeared to be a dream life by giving birth to Khai.

But Zayn also had his demons: he suffered from an eating disorder while in ID, then had to cancel solo gigs because of his crippling anxiety. One of his darkest moments was in 2021, when he entered a no contest plea to four charges of harassment against Gigi's mother, Yolanda Hadid.

He was sentenced to 360 days of probation, and anger management and domestic violence education.

It was the end for him and Gigi but the beginning of Zayn doing the oh-so-American thing of finding himself. 

And it turns out the Bradford-born lad is most himself... on his Pennsylvania farm. The new start is mostly thanks to Khai, three.