Niall Horan tells Orlando Bloom he ‘would not be here’ if Katy Perry hadn’t saved him on X Factor

‘My audition was going very south, Orlando,’ Horan told the actor

Orlando Bloom learnt for the first time that his wife Katy Perry is responsible for the career of Niall Horan.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star and former One Direction singer shared the couch on The Late Late Show with James Corden on Thursday (16 February).

The host began by pointing out that the two shared “quite a connection” as if it were not for Bloom’s partner Perry, Horan “would not be sitting here now”.

Perry was a guest judge on The X Factor in 2010 when Horan was auditioning in the competition.

Corden then pulled up a clip of the moment the “Teenage Dreams” singer cast the deciding vote to send Horan through to the next round.

“That is fantastic!” Bloom, who had not appeared to have seen the clip before, raved. “Is that the moment that changed your whole thing?” He asked Horan.

“My audition was going very south, Orlando,” Horan responded, drawing laughs from the audience.

“Katy just... kept me in the competition and if it wasn’t for her I definitely would not be here and she knows it!”

Asked if he remembered what the moment he was sent through to the next stage of the singing competition felt like, Horan said: “The whole time I’m walking onto the stage, and I’m just thinking like, ‘That’s Katy Perry. That’s Simon Cowell.’ The whole thing, it looked like a postcard. It didn’t feel like it was real because I watched the show for so long on TV.

“And Katy was at [her] peak, we’re talking like “Teenage Dream”, five No 1’s that year. It was 2010 or 2009, whatever it was. So I was just blown away by that, firstly.”

He concluded: “It was just mind-boggling. Little did I know what was to come afterwards. But if it wasn’t for Katy... When we see each other still we have an embrace of thanks.”

Horan was on the show to promote his third solo album, The Show, which he announced on the same day as his appearance.

“This album is a piece of work I’m so proud of and now it’s time to pass it over to you to go and make it your own,” wrote Horan on Instagram under a photo of him looking out of a window with the album’s title on it.

“Thank you so much for being there for me all this time and I can’t wait to share the next couple of years of this new era with you,” he said.

“I’ve missed you all so much. It’s good to be back. Welcome to The Show,” the 29-year-old added.

The Irish singer also announced that his new single “Heaven” is out Friday 17 February.