Take a break, Si
Cowell’s back... but show needs a r est says winner
Alisah, who sings Jennifer Lopez’s Let’s Get Loud on tonight’s show, wants to transform her family’s life with her music. She said: “I want to earn money from my singing to provide for my family. My dream is to buy my family a restaurant with karaoke in it.”
Fifteen people are crammed into three rooms in her Philippines house, so she finds the X Factor mansion spacious. She said: “I’m overwhelmed. I’m amazed with the automatic light switches!”
Alisah and her mum Luz could only afford to fly to the UK with financial help from pals and a group of Filipino nurses now working in England.
Alisah said: “Mum’s friend lent her money and so did her nurse friends who live in the UK. There’s 175 of them living here. Mum sells food outside the hospital in the Philippines, that’s how she got to know them.
“This is my mum’s dream. She’s very proud.” SIMON Cowell returned to X Factor last night determined to boost the show’s all-time low viewing figures.
The music mogul, 58, took his seat on the judging panel having missed last weekend’s live shows after a fall.
He had been rushed to hospital with concussion after tumbling down the stairs of his London mansion.
At rehearsals on Friday, Cowell, who is mentoring the groups, was spotted with a faded bruise on the back of his neck.
Last Sunday’s show attracted just 4.6 million viewers – the lowest in X Factor’s 14-year history and fewer than half the number that watched BBC’s Strictly.
Last year’s winner Matt Terry, 24, believes the talent show should take a break.
Terry, about to release his first album Trouble, called it an amazing show. But he said: “I think in the UK you don’t realise how much you love somebody or something until it’s gone, so I think it’d work if they gave it a year off. Everyone would say where’s X Factor?
Shame
“You always want what you haven’t got, you’ll miss it.”
Last year’s runner-up Saara Aalto, 30, speaking at the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain awards, said there were too many TV contests and their acts don’t get enough time to make their mark before the next aspiring performers come along.
The Finnish singer said: “I think it would be a good idea to take it off because TV is full of competitions and there’s too much.” Asked if Cowell should rest it for a year, she replied: “I don’t know.”
She added: “I think he likes to do it every year but, in my opinion, when you have new people all the time you can’t really get to know anybody that well which is a shame.”
X Factor’s Sunday numbers were 600,000 down on Saturday’s first live show and almost two million below 2016’s first live Sunday show.
Strictly was up 400,000 from last weekend’s results, averaging 9.6 million viewers for its pre- recorded episode. The most-watched show was Blue Planet II which was seen by 10.3 million.