Pink tribute artist Zoe Alexander on X-Factor UK Auditions:

What a train wreck? Well no. It wasn’t, let me explain what happened here.

The “audition shows” on these talent shows are not the real audition, the real audition happens weeks or months beforehand. People go and appear before producers, and the producers decide who is going to go on to the television audition shows and appear before the judges. They are not looking for talent. Let me repeat this: they are not interested in talent. Darci Lynne Farmer got the golden buzzer on “America’s Got Talent”, even though she wasn’t a particularly good ventriloquist.

If they were looking for talent then talent-less people couldn’t get through to the audition shows in the first place. The producers only care about entertainment – they let some people through specifically so they can be thoroughly humiliated on television, which is what happened in this case. Although Zoe is obviously not completely talent-less, they set her up to fail, probably because they discovered she had a tendency for angry outbursts during her audition in front of the producers.

After her audition one of the judges says to her “I’m confused because you said you wanted your own identity as a singer, but then you did a Pink song”. And she says “I didn’t want to sing a Pink song, you guys told me to sing a pink song. I didn’t want to sing a Pink song, I wanted to be me, you guys told me to sing a Pink song”. The judges all say “we didn’t tell you sing a Pink song”. Hmm, really? So Zoe’s just completely stupid and irate over nothing? No – I’ll tell you exactly what happened. The producers told her they wanted her to sing So What by Pink. Whatever you’re going to perform you have to have pre-approval from the producers, she didn’t want to sing Pink but did it because the producers on the show told her to. Then they edited the end of the audition to make it appear that she was accusing the judges specifically of asking for a Pink song.

“It is contrived, it is manipulative, and if you want to get through on that show you do not need to have talent. All you’ve got to do is give them a good sob story. And they do love exploiting people’s problems on that show. Offer up a talent that they would never expect to come from that contestant. Throw in some crap about how great Britain is, Amanda will love that. And then whatever rubbish you perform in front of the judges they will tell you it was the most incredible performance they’ve ever seen, because without that hype the millions of viewers watching at home just might start to notice just how devoid of talent the acts actually are.” Simon Brodkin

Simon Brodkin’s BGT Success Formula:

1. You don’t need talent
2. Give them a sob story
3. Make your act unexpected
4. Be patriotic

To see this in action view this: