Talent Show Done Right: Losing Draws the Final Curtain

If contestants on American Idol faced their own death and that of their family as a consequence of losing, the Captain would be a rabid fan. Whoever said the British were restrained and genteel has obviously never seen X Factor, a Simon Cowell production that apparently likes its losers dead.

Distraught X Factor singer Gamu Nhengu broke down and wept last night as she told how she fears being killed by a death squad if she is sent back to lawless Zimbabwe.

Inconsolable Gamu, 18, revealed her heartbreak has been made even worse after she was turned down for a return to the show yesterday as a “wild card” contestant thanks to a bureaucratic immigration wrangle.

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In dramatic scenes aired last Sunday, Gamu was axed despite a flawless performance while rivals Katie Waissel and Cher Lloyd, who both fluffed their songs, were put through.

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“Everything is in tatters for me,” says Gamu, who arrived in the UK from unstable and violence-torn Zimbabwe five years ago... They will punish us if we go back, our lives are in ­danger.”

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Gamu now blames herself for drawing the ­attention of immigration chiefs to her family, who they want deported from the quiet ­Scottish town of ­Tillicoultry, which they now call home.

“I wish I’d never entered the X Factor because if I hadn’t been on it my ­family would be safe,  and ­because of me, now   they aren’t.”

[Mirror]