One Direction member (and Demi Lovato crush) Niall Horan came under fire recently for calling some fans waiting for him and his bandmates at the airport a “shower of c—s.” Ouch! While it’s certainly not polite language, though, is it really that big of deal?

We don’t think so, once you get down to the facts of what happened. A group of Directioners chatted with Horan in the Dublin, Ireland airport. In the video below, you can see Horan is actually just joking around with the lassies, telling them in a light manner, “Remember the last time I walked out here? You shower of c—s.” He’s smiling when he says it, and the girls don’t seem offended at all.

In fact, the fans go on to ask Horan to record a happy birthday message for a pal on their camera, to which he happily obliges. If he were being genuinely mean to them, would he have done that? We don’t think so. As a matter of fact, the same girls who are really the only ones with any right to be offended by his use of the c-word came to his defense.

One of the fans present wrote in the video description, “He’s so nice, even though he called us a shower of c—s, but hey. It was banter.” Another commenter explained that in Horan’s native Ireland, it’s more of a colloquialism than an insult, writing, “In Ireland ‘shower of c—s’ is used as ‘a group of annoying people’ but in a joking way. You say it all the time it really isn’t offensive.’” It’s also worth noting that in the U.K. as well as Australia and New Zealand, the no-no word is often used as a compliment in certain contexts. This seems like more of a culture shock than anything else to us.

Just in case he offended any One Direction fans, however, Horan took to Twitter to apologize for his language. We forgive you, Niall!

Watch Niall Horan Greet Fans at the Dublin Airport

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