Jack Grealish pays touching tribute to Liam Payne with emotional Instagram post

Jack Grealish has put out a heartfelt message in response to news of Liam Payne’s death at the age of 31.

The former One Direction star fell from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. Emergency services found him with ‘serious injuries’ and decided there was ‘no possibility of resuscitation’ before pronouncing him dead at the scene.

Alongside a picture of Payne which said ‘REST IN PEACE’, Grealish wrote on Instagram: “Awhhh no [crying emoji]. This is so sad man!! So so sad!! RIP Liam Payne. Have to start being nicer to each other in this world man.”

Payne was born in Wolverhampton and supported West Bromwich Albion – local rivals of Grealish’s boyhood club Aston Villa. The former pop sensation was also a keen football player and twice played in high-profile charity match Soccer Aid, which pits celebrities and former footballers from England against a team from the rest of the world.

While training for last year’s Soccer Aid, Payne impersonated Grealish by turning up with a headband and the City winger’s trademark hairstyle. “I am going to have a chat with him later actually and get the real energy,” he said at the time.

Police in Argentina have launched a full investigation into the circumstances around Payne’s death. Before he fell, the desk manager at the Casa Sur Palermo Hotel, where he had been staying for three days, alerted the authorities to a guest ‘on drugs and alcohol breaking everything in his room’.

“He’s in a room with a balcony and we’re afraid that he could do something that threatens his life,” they said as part of the call, according to The Independent.

Payne was a guest on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, where he spoke about his struggles with mental health and substance abuse.

“I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be,” he said. “Where’s rock bottom for me? And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it. No one would ever have seen it.

“There is some stuff that I have definitely never, never spoken about. It was really, really, really severe. It was a problem. And it was only until I saw myself after that I was like, ‘Right, I need to fix myself’. My face was just, like, 10 times more [bloated] than it is now. I just didn’t like myself very much, and then I made a change.”