Britain's Got Talent golden buzzer Act Axel Blake has spent time in a youth offenders’ prison. Axel was seen on last nights, April 17, ITV show and got into the live semi-finals as Simon Cowell pressed the Golden Buzzer.
Axel Blake said that the ‘toxic and horrible’ experience made him turn his life around and follow his dream of becoming a comedian. Simon Cowell told him: "After what everybody has been through these last couple of years, we needed acts like you,” reports the Daily Star.
But dad-of-two and property maintenance worker Axel admits his life could have taken a very different turn. When he was growing up, he got in with the wrong crowd and claimed there was "peer pressure" to do things to keep in with his pals.
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He became caught up in an altercation with a group of lads and had to spend three months in a youth offenders’ prison. Axel, of west London, said: “It was heavy in the gang life.
“You don’t wanna be a p***k, you want pride and you want respect and it consumed me. I was around the wrong kind of people, the wrong mentality, my mentality was poisoned.
"It eventually led to me going to prison when I was 18...19.”
He told ListenNotes podcast: “The governor said to me, ‘You will be back.’ I will never forget. I thought, ‘Never, never, never.’
“It changed me as a person and it changed me for the better. It was very toxic in there. It’s a horrible place to be.”
One of his gigs is now on Amazon Prime Video, called I’m Not Gonna Lie. ITV and Axel both had no comment when approached by Daily Star.
Saturday’s opening episode of Britain’s Got Talent drew a peak audience of 7.2million. Fans were not happy with Amanda Holden's golden buzzer winner, The Greatest Showman singer Loren Allred.
Though she didn’t appear on-screen in the hit flick, she lent her voice to Rebecca Ferguson’s character Jenny Lind - a professional opera singer hired by P. T. Barnum to help raise money for his circus.
Amanda pressed her golden buzzer for Loren, which means the contestant goes straight through to the live semi-final shows next month. Viewers at home were outraged by the decision and rushed to share their opinion on social media.
Taking to Twitter, one fan penned: "Gosh. A golden buzzer for an American singer who has already voiced a hugely successful Hollywood movie on Britain's Got Talent. I knew her the moment she walked on stage. She’s already famous.… not cool."
Another fumed: "I mean she was good enough to perform on the live shows as a guest. Not fair to press the golden buzzer for someone famous and has 430mil listeners on Spotify."
Britain's Got Talent airs Saturdays on ITV.
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