Who is Simon Cowell's favourite animal act? What are Amanda Holden's most emotional memories? Who shocked Alesha Dixon the most? Who did David Walliams find the funniest?
SIMON COWELL
What are your top five animal acts?
Pudsey is number one. Number two is the dog who sang to crazy frog. Then the dog who played snooker but didn’t. Jules and Matisse and the three-legged dog I liked as well.
Actually do you know what? Everyone comes down a place, at number one is the dog who burst balloons, Cally, from last year’s series. That was the dog I liked the most, so he’s number one. I loved that dog and it was such a stupid act but it made me laugh. Ok, bursting balloons number one, Pudsey number two, hypno-dog number three, Jules four and the dog who sang crazy frog, actually six, the dog who didn’t play the guitar but tried to.
AMANDA HOLDEN
What are your top five most emotional acts ever?
Oh gosh! I cry at things I don’t expect to cry at. I suppose my top five emotional moments have to be Attraction, I think there were tears and a Truly, Madly, Deeply moment
everywhere.
Then Paul Potts and Connie Talbot because I was a new mum at the time and was just thinking of Lexi. Then Andrew Johnson was a moment I really wept, he was a little boy who had been bullied, he came on and sang, it was his fight back. Very early on in the show there was the first person we ever described as a Billy Elliot moment, a guy whose father was completely against him being a majorette. He danced to Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen and it brought the house down. He was with his gran who had championed him all the way and he went on to do well on the show. I think his father accepted him for everything and that was amazing.
ALESHA DIXON
What are your top five most surprising or shocking acts of all time?
I’d say my top five surprising or shocking acts are Susan Boyle, definitely, she fooled us all. She came out, we hastily judged her and then she ended up being a big, global superstar. Ashleigh and Pudsey were a big surprise to me because I don’t think we expected them to be as brilliant as they were. A whole nation fell in love with them and they were both equally as amazing. That was one of my favourite years on the show.
Another surprising act for me would have to be Attraction, it was really moving, really different, I hadn’t seen anything like it before and the story they told was beautiful. People complain all the time about foreign acts entering the show but the British public voted for them and they won, that said it all, the talent spoke and they were brilliant. Diversity really surprised me because they came out and did something so unique and really put street dance on the map. They inspired a new generation of children to take up street dancing which I think is brilliant.
And finally, Jack Carroll really surprised me because he had an old head on young shoulders, he was so witty even when he wasn’t doing his act. Even in conversation with him he was brilliant. I really felt like I was looking at a comedian for the future. I know he didn’t win the show but he’s definitely one that stands out because doing stand-up comedy is not easy and he did it with ease.
DAVID WALLIAMS
What are your top five funniest acts on Britain’s Got Talent?
My favourite comedy act to come on the show is Jack Carroll who was just 14 years old. He just had a brilliant comic way of looking at the world. He was a completely truthful comedian and used his own experiences, the fact that he was 14 and has cerebral palsy is just part of his act. I think one of his first lines was, ‘I know what you are thinking. Harry Potter has had a bad quidditch accident’. That put everyone at ease and we all thought, ‘Wow’. From that line on I thought he could become a comedy superstar and he has actually become a friend. I really adore him and I think he’s going to have a stellar career and is going to be as big as Michael McIntyre or Peter Kay one day.
Stavros Flatley was always one of my funniest acts on the show. I loved it, it was a little
bit amateurish but in a really good way. It was like something father and son had done at a family BBQ and got everyone laughing. They got the nation laughing too, it was really silly, joyous and they were actually good dancers. I liked that they were true punters, they were father and son having a go, they weren’t people doing it for years and years. They still make a living to this day.
Jenson Zhu was a very unusual act. He was almost an absurd comedian in the mold of someone like Harry Hill, it was non impressions. It was completely nutty but Woody Allen said once that the only way to judge comedy is whether it’s funny or not, and he really made me laugh. I think Jenson was in on some of the jokes but not all of them and that made it all the better. He was a likeable guy and you were really rooting for him. It was completely bizarre and unexpected.
My Golden Buzzer last year is one of my favourite funny acts on the show, Lorraine Bowen, with her brilliant and incredibly catchy crumble song. As soon as she appeared on the TV people were singing the song to me, especially kids, kids loved the song. She was such a brilliant character, it can’t be that easy to write a song about crumble, she was a real British eccentric and that’s something we want to celebrate on this show. She just had funny bones, you know it when you see it, and that makes the best kind of comic. The fact she had a keyboard on an ironing board, her funny dancing and flapping her bingo wings, it was brilliantly entertaining. I wish she had got to the final and I think the crumble song should have been number one.
