*THE PEOPLE INTERVIEW* The boys want it - and seem to be getting it!

In the biggest boyband battle for years, The Wanted are well and truly on top - and not just in the charts!

The lads became the most successful British boyband in American chart history when Glad You Came reached number five last week.

Take That only got to number seven with Back for Good in 1995 and X Factor outfit One Direction reached number 28 with What Makes You Beautiful.

In an exclusive interview with The People, The Wanted - Max George, Nathan Sykes, Jay McGuiness, Tom Parker, and Siva Kaneswaran - revealed how success in the States is not confined to record sales.

Nathan, 18, said: "If you look at One Direction's chart position and then look at ours, they're not really even our rivals.

"They have different fans to us. We don't want their fans, they're too young.

"We laugh and say that their fans are our fans' younger sisters. We have our own success going on in America and it isn't just with the music."

Indeed not.

The Wanted's rugged yet extremely handsome look has proved a big hit with the American ladies. And Nathan revealed that their female fans across the Atlantic are a lot more easy-going than their British cousins.

He said: "We are extremely fortunate to have the best-looking fans - they are absolutely beautiful, so fit. But there is one big difference between the American ones and the British ones.

"We find British girls very cute but very shy so they take a bit more hard work to crack.

"On the other hand, the American girls are forward and loud. We're cleaning up with the Americans.

"If they're interested then we will know about it - they will tell us they're interested and then we swap numbers. Let's just say that after that it usually ends up in a positive outcome. We find we have to try a lot harder with our British fans."

For these boys, their next trip to the States cannot come soon enough. Nathan added: "We can't wait until the American spring break because we are going to Las Vegas. Our tour manager has told us that he is not going to stop until he has got us the fittest girls there so that is something some of the boys and I are definitely very much looking forward to."

Speaking ahead of last night's sell-out gig at London's O2, Jay thought back to his time in the States - and struggled to wipe the massive grin off his face.

The 21-year-old said: "I slept with more girls in America in one month than I have for a whole year in the UK. The boys who are not single help me, they make way for me. And Americans' boobs are lovely.

There are a lot of fake ones."

So what is it that makes the boys so popular with the US hotties? "Our accents," said Nathan.

"We'll be in a club and we'll see the girls coming over and they'll tell us they love our accents. Then things take their course."

Of course, not all of the band take part in such antics.

Loved-up Max, 24, watches from the sidelines with his gorgeous girlfriend, Michelle Keegan. The Corrie beauty, according to the boys, sometimes even tries to set the rest of the band up with her single mates.

Nathan said: "We're mostly all players, apart from Max, who is going out with Michelle. She loves hearing our stories about us and our fans.

"Michelle loves getting involved in the gossip - sometimes she comes to watch us perform with a load of her friends and she tries to palm them off on us."

The lads may breezily dismiss One Direction as their rivals but they cannot quite believe they have charted higher in the US than Take That.

Tom, 23, said: "It is a massive achievement to be bigger than Take That - Back For Good is such an amazing song so to beat them is huge. "Now we're being compared to The Beatles, which just takes the p*** - most of us aren't even old enough to have a legal drink in America." There were, in fact, attempts to ban all the boys from drinking in the States.

However, they plan to celebrate their US success with a legal drink over here - with some special guests.

Nathan said: "Once this battle is over with One Direction we are going to take them for a drink, and we'll show them who can drink the most.

"I think they will enjoy the experience of seeing us being able to drink a lot more than them.

"I think we can drink them under the table - when we're on tour we go out drinking every third night so we have had plenty of practice.

"We tend to start on beer and then go on to spirits. Then of course we will take the 1D boys to a strip club. I would love to see their faces when we suggest that. I think it's highly unlikely they have ever been to one before."

The band appeared on the massively popular Ellen DeGeneres show on US TV in January and they also have an interview lined up with legendary American chatshow host Jay Leno.

The lads are desperate for their music to be taken seriously - unlike, they claim, the X Factor lot.

Jay said: "One Direction are smashing it. Along with Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez they are on the front of all the teenage magazines in America because the young girls love them.

"But, on the other side of the coin, we are on the radio stations talking about our music."

The Wanted also insist they don't want to be restricted by a Simon Cowell figure overseeing the band.

Nathan said: "Unlike One Direction we don't have Simon but we don't need him either.

"He is too controlling for us - we like to have control of our own music. We are too outspoken, we want to choose who we work with and we want to work with a lot of different ones. We are so focused on ourselves.

"We like to sit and write our songs, decide what we do but, like any of the X Factor acts, One Direction don't really have much of a choice about what they do.

"Of course having Simon behind a project is an amazing thing to have but we haven't suffered by not having him.

"We have got on the Ellen show and we're going on Jay Leno so that speaks for itself. We are so proud, we are doing this for Britain.

"If you had asked any of us two years ago if we thought we'd be here today, we'd have laughed in their faces."

The boys - who only hit the big time in July 2010 - have now got just four dates left of their sell-out tour of UK and Ireland.

They are due to finish on Friday in Dublin where they will celebrate their US achievement with their families on a very big night out.

However, Nathan insists that the parents will be "ditched" before they hit the nightclubs.