Teacher wows BGT judges
A secondary school teacher from West Sussex took the Britain’s Got Talent auditions by storm on Sunday (April 17).
Tom Ball had a standing ovation from both the audience and the four judges on the ITV juggernaut, which returned to primetime at the weekend.
With his father and his fiancee in the audience, Tom sang Writing’s On The Wall by Sam Smith.
All four judges gave the 23-year-old a resounding ‘yes’ to go through to the next stage of BGT.
Head judge Simon Cowell said as he welcomed Tom, from Burgess Hill, to the stage: “You look very happy,” to which Tom said he was very excited.
He said he loved being a secondary school teacher. “The kids don’t know I’m here. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“What if it goes badly?” Simon asked.
But it didn’t go badly – even though Tom admitted he had only ever sung to about one member of his class before.
He said he was compared to Michael Ball ‘quite a lot’ and his surname helped as well.
After his stunning performance, judge co-host
Dec Donnelly joked: “Go to the top of the class, Tom Ball!”
David Walliams said: “You never forget a good teacher. How lucky your kids are to have you because you seem such a lovely person. You’ve got this exceptional talent.”
Amanda Holden added: “That was an exceptional audition. One of the best we have heard in the last 16 years.”
The final word went to Simon Cowell. He said there were lots and lots of good singers out there but he always believed personality played a big part.
“There’s something very likable about you. I don’t think there’s a single person in this room that wanted you to fail,” he said.
“I think you’ve got about 4,000 yeses.”