As fans of this year’s Strictly will testify, JB Gill can always be relied upon to light up the ballroom with his smile and natural exuberance.

But even for the happy-go-lucky boyband member, he admits it has been a ‘tough’ week as he paid tribute to his ‘very good friend’ Liam Payne who was laid to rest at St Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire on Wednesday.

While Liam’s family and friends, including JB’s JLS bandmate Marvin Humes, were saying goodbye to the much-loved One Direction member, JB and his dance partner were rehearsing for tonight’s live shows.

And in something of a cruel irony, JB’s dance with professional Lauren Oakley, this week is not an emotionally charged Latin number but the happiest of the ballroom dances: the Charleston.

One wonders how JB will manage to paint that smile on against the background of such loss.

JB – born Jonathan Benjamin Gill – and Liam started their journey to fame together, meeting for the first time while auditioning for The X Factor in 2008.

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JB Gill admits it has been a ‘tough’ week as he paid tribute to his ‘very good friend’ Liam Payne who was laid to rest at St Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire on Wednesday

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Liam died  last month after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, aged just 31 [pictured in 2019]

While JB auditioned alongside his three JLS bandmates, a 14-year-old lad from Wolverhampton called Liam also impressed the judges that day and sailed through to the next round.

The 37-year-old said: ‘He was a very good friend. We literally met him when he was starting his journey out. It was before he had the success of One Direction, because he was just a solo artist in the same year that we were in the X Factor and got onto the live shows. I just remember him following the boys and I around.’

While JLS would go onto become runners-up to Alexandra Burke in a nail-biting finale, a young Liam didn’t make it to the live shows after Simon Cowell rejected the star in the bootcamp round at his Barbados home.

JB said: ‘He wanted to be in JLS, to be honest. But when he got knocked out at boot camp, we said ‘Just keep going, keep working hard, you’ll get your chance’. I’m obviously glad that he was able to do that.’

Liam took the advice and ran with it. Returning two years later, Cowell brought him together with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik to form boyband One Direction, who would go on to dominate the global music charts.

But for Liam, worldwide fame clearly came with considerable demons, which culminated in his death last month after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, aged just 31.

‘It’s incredibly sad,’ JB tells me. ‘Especially when it’s super close to home. We had a personal relationship with Liam, and all the One Direction boys.

‘When you come from the same show, and you go through similar experiences, you have that common ground that you can identify with. It has been tough when you see negative things come out of that.’

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While Liam’s family and friends, including JB’s JLS bandmate Marvin Humes , were saying goodbye to the much-loved One Direction member, JB and his dance partner were rehearsing for tonight’s live shows [pictured with Lauren Oakley]

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JB – born Jonathan Benjamin Gill – and Liam started their journey to fame together, meeting for the first time while auditioning for The X Factor in 2008 [pictured with JLS on the show in 2008]

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While JB auditioned alongside his three JLS bandmates, a 14-year-old lad from Wolverhampton called Liam also impressed the judges that day and sailed through to the next round [Liam pictured auditioning in 2008]

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‘He was a very good friend. We literally met him when he was starting his journey out. It was before he had the success of One Direction, because he was just a solo artist in the same year that we were in the X Factor and got onto the live shows’ [Liam at Judge’s Houses in 2008]

JB, who would ‘love’ to dance to a One Direction song as an ‘incredible tribute’ to his friend, has been able to take one piece of comfort from the tragedy.

He said: ‘One of the things that I do take from the situation, a bit of a silver lining if you will, is that as young as he was, and as tragic as it is, Liam was able to do the thing that he loved the most, which was to sing and perform in front of the world.

‘It’s sad for him, for his family, for his little boy, but it’s one of those things that you can take a bit of comfort from, because he was able to live his dream. And not everybody can say that.’

While One Direction had many reported feuds which ultimately led to them disbanding in 2016, JB’s JLS – which also features Aston Merrygold, Marvin Humes, and Ortis Williams – have recently finished a hugely successful summer tour.

He thinks the key to JLS’s longevity is they weren’t rushed together, as he questions manufactured boybands, in what could be seen as a veiled swipe at Cowell.

He said: ‘I think for a lot of those groups that are put together, immediately people are looking for results. They need to have a number one, they need to have a single, they need to have an album. Everything’s go, go, go.

‘With us I think there was a bit more of an organic process. We were together by the time we went into the show. We weren’t manufactured.

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‘When you come from the same show, and you go through similar experiences, you have that common ground that you can identify with. It has been tough when you see negative things come out of that’

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‘It’s sad for him, for his family, for his little boy, but it’s one of those things that you can take a bit of comfort from, because he was able to live his dream. And not everybody can say that’

‘I think us having that 18 months or so before we then went into that highly pressurised environment of The X Factor put us in good stead.’

Fifteen years after JB’s X Factor experience he is battling it out in a very different television competition: Strictly.

If bookies are to be believed, he’s not just a shoo-in for next week’s quarter finals, but he is a contender to lift the glitterball at the finals on December 14.

But his bright and breezy attitude as we talk belies just how eventful his ten weeks in the Strictly ballroom have been, including an emotional goodbye to his first professional partner, Amy Dowden.

He had originally been paired with the Welsh dancer, who suffers from Crohn’s disease and is in remission from breast cancer, but she was forced to take a week’s rest after collapsing backstage during week six’s live shows.

She later withdrew from the competition entirely after a reported foot injury, and JB was permanently coupled with Oakley.