By Jason Wright (Entertainment Expert)
SCOTLAND’s Jai McDowell was the surprise winner in Saturday’s final of Britain’s Got Talent. Although most of the talk has been that the talent certainly hasn’t been up to the standard in recent years, the grand finale of 2011 promised to be big and entertaining with perhaps the best of mix of acts that it could deliver this year. Luckily, the quality of the final didn’t disappoint.
Scottish tenor McDowall poured emotion and soul into his performance and deservedly won high praises from the judges. It gave him a glimmer of hope that he could pull off an upset and that’s what ended up happening, despite a perfect performance from young singer Ronan Parke.
 |
| PERFECTION: Ronan's rendition of 'Because of You' was stunning |
Parke, 12, the bookies favourite and at the centre of a ‘fix’ scam document last week produced an invincible performance of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Because of You.’ However, it wasn’t just these two acts that grabbed the attention on Saturday night.
Retired pensioner Steven Hall may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but his breakdancing was certainly an entertaining act. Despite suffering a sore throat on the night, Hall kicked the show off in explosive fashion, which was followed up by a solid rendition of the audition performance by Michael Collings. Despite only having 24 hours to prepare after Friday’s semi, Collings confidence shone through.
Risk-taking was a key term of the night’s action. Comedian Les Gibson made a brave gamble to ditch the Ross Kemp/Kevin Webster impressions for accents of the judges. Although his David Hasslehoff and Michael McIntyre impressions were spot on, Gibson was wide of the mark with Simon Cowell and got a tongue lashing from Cowell afterwards. Nevertheless, he has been a breath of fresh air in the competition and is bound to get an ITV Christmas show on the back of his performances in the show. Another favourite with the fans, dancer Razy Gogonea, took a huge risk with adding a new element into his routine, in the form of fireballs. Like Gibson, Razy’s ambition got the better of him, and it didn’t quite work off. Surprisingly, his routine was overshadowed by pianist Paul Gbegbaje. He took a risk with a song that no-one had ever heard off, and his ambition worked and won him deserved praise.
Fellow pianist Jean Martyn was the only female in the line-up, and the mad woman was a crowd pleaser, but her chances of winning the show were rather slim anyways. Ballet dancer James Hobley was lacklustre in a performance that was almost a carbon copy of his semi-final routine, whilst boyband New Bounce closed the final off with a crowd-pleasing performance, although they have some way to go if they want to fulfil predictions of following in the footsteps of JLS.
Just over half an hour later, the acts were called back to the stage for the public’s verdict. In a change, the full voting result was revealed by Ant and Dec, in reverse order…
10th – Jean Martyn
9th – Les Gibson
8th – James Hobley
7th – Steven Hall
6th – Paul Gbegbaje
5th – Michael Collings
4th – Razy Gogonea
 |
| FATE: The tension builds as Ronan and Jai await their fate |
However, to the complete shock of Jai, this was his night and his victory. For Ronan, this was a distinct feeling of déjà vu, with Susan Boyle having lost out in a similar way two years ago to Diversity. However, his future looks very bright and the gracious attitude he showed in being beaten by Jai certainly won him a new-found respect.
As for Jai, it was an inspired song choice that won it for him in the end. He collects the prize of £100,000 and more importantly, a place on this year’s Royal Variety Performance in front of Her Majesty the Queen.
Congratulations to Jai McDowall on a sensational Britain’s Got Talent win!
