BGT's Hollie brands Cowell a "bully"

BGT's Hollie brands Cowell a "bully"
BGT's Hollie brands Cowell a "bully"

Britain's Got Talent's newest child star Hollie Steel has branded Simon Cowell a "cruel bully" for nearly reducing her to tears on the show. The 10-year-old - who failed to impress the judges with her ballet dancing but wowed them with her sensational singing voice - said Cowell was wrong to poke fun at her tutu and criticise her choice of song. And Hollie - who has suffered from bullying at school for the past two years - has also vowed to prove him wrong by going on to beat the show's current favourite Susan Boyle. "Simon is a bully," she told the Sunday Mirror. "He was very mean to me. He might have thought it was funny but it's lonely up there on that stage on your own. I'm only 10 and when he said those things about my tutu I felt like I wanted to cry." "I had tears in my eyes but I didn't want to him to see me cry like the bullies at school so I thought of things that made me happy. I thought of being in the final of Britain's Got Talent and winning it." Hollie received rave reviews from the other judges for her rendition of I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady. Guest judge Kelly Brook called her "inspirational and beautiful" while Piers Morgan said, "We've seen lots of children on this show but I have never heard anyone sing as good as you." However Simon was less kind. "I didn’t like what you were wearing," he said. "You came across as a typical little girl who wants to be a ballerina, and I wasn't crazy about the song." However even he admitted that he thought her voice was "fantastic".

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.