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As always the judges are on the lookout for something that would excite the audience. But the Sunday night’s show talents are not what they are expecting.
The ITV talent got a lot of complaints after it allowed a stripper’s audition to be shown before the watershed.
In a separate episode, it focused on the humiliation of two teenagers who felt remorse when their mother performed a dreadful version of a Lady Gaga song.
Ofcom, the media regulator, was yesterday under the hot seat as they were tasked to investigate the two programmes after a backlash from viewers.
Reports claimed that the show gather numerous complaints about explicit act and 30 about the treatment of the teenagers last Sunday. Sunday.
The rating of the show suffered tremendously as it drops down to less than eight million, down by more than two million on last year, which suggests that viewers have tired of the same cheap antics.
Many were surprised on Sunday night’s show when stripper and Britney Spears impersonator Lorna Bliss performed on stage before 9pm. It was a time when many children were watching; the stripper was wearing a lime-green bikini and fishnet body stocking.
The 33-year-old blonde circled around facing startled judge Louis Walsh before chasing fellow judge Gary Barlow through the audience as she sings the Britney song Dancing Till The World Ends.
Weeks ahead of her performance, many viewers already complained after a 14-year-old girl and 16-year-old boy were repeatedly filmed looking disgusted at their mother’s awful audition on the show.
Contestant Alison Brunton, 51, said she has a voice like Madonna before singing the Lady GaGa hit The Edge of Glory on the September 1 episode.
Guest judge and Spice Girl Mel B claimed that the performance was ‘horrific’ while Walsh said her audition was ‘a bit like somebody drunk at a wedding’. Clearly, Miss Brunton’s children were embarrassed about her decision to be part of the show; they looked worried and embarrassed during the ear-splitting performance.
That not all, viewers were said, were comfortable during the whole performance of the mother of two. With one writing on Twitter: ‘Watching The X-Factor, oh no I feel sorry for those two teenage kids. The humiliation!!’
Another said: ‘Oh X-Factor, you are so cruel.’
Last night Ofcom spokesman Rhys Hurd said the watchdog was measuring the complaints and deciding whether they would conduct an investigation.
Ofcom, which announced an onslaught on sleaze in pre-watershed programmes last year, has also written to ITV asking whether the welfare and dignity of Miss Brunton’s children had been taken into account during the show.
An ITV spokesman said: ‘The X Factor is a well-established format and contestants regularly bring their family to support them as Alison did.
‘Footage of family members is only used when appropriate consent has been obtained.’
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