A Harry Styles Happy Birthday: Exeposé speaks to Alice Cousins

One Direction fan and Exeter drama student, Alice Cousins received a particularly special birthday present when Harry Styles sent her a tweet:

Hi, @alicecousins92 I heard its your birthday. I hope you have a really lovely day.. Have funnnn .xx

— Harry Styles (@Harry_Styles) March 22, 2013

Within minutes, the story had gone viral but in amongst the angry tweets, sensational news headlines across the globe and Taylor Swift comparisons was a very lucky birthday girl…

Hey Alice – happy belated birthday!

So, how did Harry Styles end up tweeting at you?

Image credit: David Fisher/Rex Features

I used to go to Birmingham University but dropped out and one of my flatmates there I still keep in contact with, because she is so lovely. Herself and the Styles family are family friends and she kindly texted him asking him to tweet me happy birthday because, to quote “she’s rather obsessed with you” and sent him the picture of me and the cardboard cutout which my parents had gotten me as a joke for my birthday.

How did you react when you found out?
After she sent me a screen shot of the text she sent to him, then I screamed because he texted back saying “okay”, I ran up to my mum screaming and told her, where she also screamed (also a massive boyband fan, runs in the family). Then five minutes later, I looked at my phone and saw I had loads of random people adding me on facebook and I thought how odd it was and knew something was up so I checked twitter where I had gone up by 300 followers and people were retweeting his tweet.

I couldn’t see the original tweet because I had so many interactions coming up and then people were tweeting me saying he was following me when I just went mental and was jumping up and down and screaming. My mum was on the phone to my aunty telling her all about it and both my sister’s posting it all over facebook! I quickly rang my best friend to tell her to check it out where she handled the nasty tweets by telling people to “piss off”!

How was your birthday – did you get any other good presents? 
My birthday was already amazing; waking up to my house covered in balloons and banners courtesy of my lovely housemates. I then had lunch with them at the Vic where they gave me my present of a personalized ipod which I was just taken aback by, and then travelled back home where my parents scared the life out of me with the Harry Styles cut-out, which I thought was just hilarious. My parents bought me some amazing presents including the Mulberry bag I asked them for and not expected to get and my sister’s got me some Ray-Bans so I already had the best birthday.

Image credit: Alice Cousins

Has Harry contacted you since?
Apart from replying to my tweet saying “no worries, have a good one. x” I unfortunately haven’t heard anything, and don’t expect to!

How big of a One Direction fan were you before?
Everyone who knows me, knows I am just a massive boyband fan and so One Direction are just my favourite. For Christmas, my sister got me a 1D mug and I’ve been given a Harry Styles poster for secret santa before.

Who is your favourite and why?
Harry is obviously my favourite – my ex boyfriend looks suspiciously like him. I think I have a penchant for brunettes and a cheeky smile!

There seems to have been some nasty twitter reactions: what did they say and how did you react?
Everyone is saying that there have been nasty tweets, but I haven’t really taken any notice of them. They all seem to be more directed at Harry and angry that he never noticed their birthday. A lot of the tweets I felt really saddened by as they were saying things like “you’ll never notice me because I’m ugly”.

I also think a lot of the people thought the cardboard cut out was actually him which I thought was hilarious. I’m not taking anything too personally, I know there are a lot of crazed fans out there who are just jealous and confused as to how I got tweeted.

What do you think of the story going national and suddenly being famous?
The story making the newspapers has literally just baffled me. It shows the power of One Direction and twitter and how the media blow things all out of proportion. If I didn’t have curly hair in that picture, they wouldn’t think I look like Taylor Swift but I’m sure they’d have made another story!

I’m taking it all light heartedly as I’m sure my fifteen minutes of fame will be over by tomorrow and they’ll have moved on to another un-news worthy story!

Thanks for your time, Alice!  

What do you all think: is Harry Styles a top bloke for tweeting happy birthday to Alice, or should he have been tweeting happy birthday to every single one of his fans? Answer in our poll below…

[poll id=”30″]

Olivia Luder, Online Editor

The Brit Awards: who cares?

David Joseph, chairman of the Brits, said on Wednesday that as the end of his three-year tenure appraoches, this year’s award ceremony would go out with a bang. It ended with a performance by Emeli Sandé. Go figure. The evening’s award ceremony honouring the best in British music (and a few token international awards) was hardly controversial, staying conservative in its choice of winners and the behaviour of its attendees. The days are gone when the Gallaghers always caused an uproar and any ruckus has been replaced by ITV’s strategic shots of Harry Styles when Taylor Swift walked onto the stage to present an award (she also performed but I used that opportunity to go and watch some paint dry). Oh, and the awards themselves looked like they had a severe bout of chicken pox.  

Emeli Sandé and Ben Howard – the conservative’s choice.
Photo credit to thesun.co.uk

The awards themselves proved to be disappointing with big wins for Emeli Sandé (Best Female Solo Artist and Mastercard British Album of the Year) and Ben Howard (Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act). As the evening wore on, it seemed to be a matter of charting high in the Top 40 to win an award. Whilst acts such as Jessie Ware and Alabama Shakes went unacknowledged, chart-toppers like Sandé came out on top. It’s as if the judges based their decisions solely on who sold records, not a reflection of the innovative work many nominated had crafted to produce their records. The one award I felt was thoroughly well-deserved was International Male Solo Artist which was picked up by Frank Ocean but the Brits fell back to earth with a nasty bump when One Direction were given an award for Global Success (which was definitely completely made-up just to get the boys in front of the cameras and make the Brit committee safe from any crazed fans attacking the headquarters for Mumford and Sons triumphing in the British Group category).

It is sad that with British music flourishing, the Brits still seem to ignore anything apart from the Top 40. While, I recognize that selling records means success, it most certainly does not mean creativity, innovation or talent which is something that an award should signify. If you are sick of Adele (don’t worry, she’s performing at the Oscars on Sunday), Coldplay (how do they manage to win something every year?) or Emeli Sandé (that’s if the Olympics Opening Ceremony, the Olympics Closing Ceremony, three appearances at a two hour Brit Award ceremony and your local village fete isn’t enough…), fear not for British music. Just don’t watch the Brits.

But if you are interested in who won what, you can find out here. P.S. don’t bother.    

Daisy Meager, Music Editor 

Damien Hirst’s spin on the Brit statuette.
Photo credit to brits.co.uk