This week, the unthinkable happened.

In one of the biggest showbiz shocks of the century, Zayn Malik of One Direction sensationally quit the band which had propelled him to stardom of epic proportions – breaking the hearts of millions of female fans across the globe in the process.

The time had come for him to be a normal 22-year-old and have some private time out of the spotlight, he said in his public statement.

But that was little consolation to the 200 Manchester workers who called employment law experts requesting compassionate leave to help them deal with the news.

I’m quite indifferent to the talents of One Direction, because quite frankly, these days I’m too old and past it. But there was once a time when boybands were my biggest love, and there wasn’t a male group around in the mid 1990s that I did not have a poster of on my wall.

It was a time that proved to be a pivotal moment in pop music: the breakout of the boy bands, and I’m not just being dramatic – I seriously was obsessed.

My room was a shrine to Five, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, Westlife and *N SYNC. I could not go to sleep unless I had kissed goodnight to the Lee Brennan of 911 fame poster next to my bed. I vividly remember dripping real tears into my dinner when my mum casually mentioned at the table that she had read that Shane from Westlife had a girlfriend, because I genuinely and wholeheartedly believed that one day I would meet him and marry him.

So I have great sympathy for Zayn’s fans, who will be going through hell now. After all, I’m really not sure that I’m 100% recovered from the day Robbie Williams left Take That.

From over the pond, it was the Backstreet Boys who were getting hearts racing also in the 1990s

But what is the fascination with boybands, and why are they the cause of so much torment to teenage girls?

The ‘mania’ doesn’t tend to happen with female singers or girl bands on the same level, even though I remember feeling like the world was ending when Geri left the Spice Girls. Of course the girls earn loyal fans but not genuine love, adoration and hysteria like the boys get.

Jude Rogers, a music journalist and ‘obsessed teen fan’ by her own admission, recently presented a Radio 4 documentary on ‘hysterical girls’, and I think she hits the nail on the head when she says that being such a superfan had been a way to explore herself and creating her own identity. “It allows you to explore your own imagination, and your sexual feelings about boys in a safe way,” she said. “When you’re 11 or 12 you don’t know what those feelings are.

“It’s good to have a focus to escape from real life and girls like the opportunity to do that. It does take you away from your boring normal world of going to school and dinner with your parents. It’s really fun going into that whole world of wanting to know everything about them,” she added.

Boyband mania is certainly not a new phenomenon. Ever since The Beatles burst onto television sets in the early 1960s, teenage girls have been screaming themselves hoarse over boy bands, and every decade afterwards has had at least one band that has stole the hearts of the young girls of the time.

In the 70s it was the Bay City Rollers and The Osmonds, in the 80s it was Bros and New Kids on the Block, while the 90s had Take That, East 17 and Backstreet Boys. Westlife followed in the 2000s, and for a while the boyband craze appeared to have died down – until One Direction came along and started it all again.

But how times have changed. While once we were buying their songs on cassette tapes, girls today are downloading their favourite bands on iTunes. Before, we wrote letters to their fan clubs; now we can actually tweet them directly. But even though the methods have changed, the madness is definitely still there.

Take That captured the hearts of thousands of girls growing up in the 1990s

Psychologist Linda Papadopoulos thinks it’s more difficult for young girls today to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

"Young women have always been emotionally invested in boybands,"; she said. “That’s part of their appeal. They project onto them all their teenage emotions, which they have so many of, and as well as providing cool tunes, they offer a way of exploring teenage feelings. So when they do break up it is going to impact lots of girls. “Today, because of the quasi-social relationship we have with celebrities, it’s even harder. Previously there wasn’t the sense that you were sharing so much of their lives but we know so much more about celebrity lives today and as a result feel like we have more of a connection.

“Social media makes it much harder; we know what they think, what they wear, what their dog’s name is. We know a lot more and as a consequence we feel even worse when they do something to upset us.”

I don’t know how I would have felt if I’d been able to directly message Shane from Westlife. As exciting as the prospect would have been, I think the utter torment of waiting for him to reply, and then the feeling of utter desolation when I realised he actually wasn’t going to respond would have been too much for my poor little 13-year-old self to take.

Of course I dreamed of marrying Shane one day, but had I actually met him, I’m sure I would have fallen to pieces. Thankfully I had grown up a bit by the time I came face to face with the other love of my teens, Ritchie Neville from Five, in the sauce aisle of Tesco last year. That's another story.

But obviously my racing heart, sweaty palms and the fact I couldn’t even see straight was proof that we never really fall out of love with our boyband crushes. But I think I can live with that.

BOYBANDS THROUGH TIME

THE BEATLES - 1960-1970. Widely considered to be the first ‘boy band’, the group inspired a hysteria that was coined as Beatlemania when they first became popular. Unlike many other groups, the Beatles were able to crack America, like One Direction, and on their first trip to the US in 1964, they were greeted by more than 3,000 hysterical fans.

The OSMONDS – 1958-present. The Osmonds were a singing family who were given their own TV show and went on to make it as teen heartthrobs. The group generated such a high level of hysteria among fans both in the UK and US that some called their popularity Osmondmania.

WHAM! - 1981-1986. Wham! caused hysteria among teenage girls from their first performance on Top Of The Pops in 1982. Fans reacted terribly when the band announced they were breaking up and to soften the blow, Wham! held an eight-hour event to say goodbye at Wembley stadium in 1986.

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK - 1984-present. Some NKOTB fans of the band are still so devoted 30 years on that they are willing to fork out hundreds of dollars each to meet them backstage at concerts nowadays, two decades after their prime.

BROS -1986-1992. The beginning of the modern era of Boy-band mania, Bros caused hysteria during their late 80s heyday.

TAKE THAT - 1990–present. Their first split left their millions of fans so devastated a government hotline was set up for people to ring in case they were struggling to cope.

BACKSTREET BOYS - 1993-present - described as the best-selling boy band in history, members have spoken about how they regularly used to come back to their hotel rooms and tour buses to find fans hidden in their beds and wardrobes.

*NSYNC – 1995-2002. Seen as ‘The New Backstreet Boys’, in just one day they sold over 1 million copies of their second album. After they split, frontman Justin Timberlake went on to have global success as both a solo singer and a film star.