Britain's Got Talent
Contents |
Host
Paul O'Grady (unaired pilot)
Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly
Co-hosts
Judges: Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Piers Morgan (all series), Kelly Brook (early auditions, 2009), Louis Walsh (stand-in judge, 2010)
ITV2 coverage (Britain's Got More Talent): Stephen Mulhern
Broadcast
SyCo / Fremantle Media for ITV and ITV2, 9 June 2007 to present
Synopsis
A search for a talented performer, with the prize of an appearance at the Royal Variety Performance and £100,000.
Simon Cowell leads a team of light-entertainment deities (and former tabloid editor Piers Morgan) around the country in search of fine talent. Unlike every other talent contest ever, the performer need not be a singer. Dancers, ventriloquists, clowns, people who play the spoons, people who carve sculptures out of ice are all welcome to audition.
The key gimmick here was that each judge was issued a large X, linked to a buzzer. When the judge had had enough of the performance, they pressed their buzzer, and their X lit up. If all three judges buzzed in, the act was entertaining no-one, and terminated. Any resemblance to the gimmick of Let Me Entertain You is surely a coincidence.
The first half of the series followed the usual route of showing people who were either very competent or very poor at what they did. The latter stages returned to a more traditional theatre setting, with a public phone-in to determine who would advance to, and ultimately win, the final.
Inventor
Champion
2007: Paul Potts (opera singer)
2008: George Sampson (dancer)
2009: Diversity (dance troupe)
2010: Spelbound (gymnastics troupe)
Trivia
Contestant Richard Bates, an impressionist and organ player, was removed from the programme by producers when Lancashire Police contacted ITV to inform them that he was listed on the Sex Offenders Register, following an unspecified offence in December 2005. [1]
After the semi-finals, drag act the Kit Kat Dolls were disqualified after the News of the World claimed three of the members were part-time escorts.
Before she became a judge on The X Factor, Cheryl Cole was in the running for the role of the female judge.
During the open auditions in February 2010, Simon Cowell came down with the flu, meaning he was unable to take his place on the judging panel. As a result, fellow X Factor judge Louis Walsh was drafted in at short notice as a temporary replacement.
