Have We Just Seen The X-Factor Champion?

Published on August 22, 2009 by Craig Sharp · View Comments

**UPDATE** Check out Danyl’s performance right here! Video at the end!

It’s 8:20pm GMT in a sleepy town known as Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, England. It’s been a relatively uneventful day, I went to dinner with my Dad, spoke to one or two friends over the phone – oh and I think I’ve just witnessed something spectacular!

Let me just say that the X-Factor is not a show I will be covering very much, if at all, but that said – I do believe that in week one, I’ve just witnessed this year’s X-Factor winner, and possibly the greatest singer the show has ever seen!

Yes I understand that this is a bold claim to make, yes this is the first week in the competition, yes my readers will tear chunks out of me should I be wrong. But at this point, at this time on Saturday the 22nd August 2009 I feel absolutely certain that I’ve just witnessed something truly fantastic.

With the exception of a surge in twin/triplet acts this year, tonight’s first episode of “Sir Simon Cowell’s X-Factor” was largely uneventful – that is until the last ten minutes of the show. Ten minutes before the show was due to finish, at the exact time I was cursing the fact that all that was left was boring second-rate television for the rest of the evening (yes I have no life, get over it) something spectacular happened – a quiet, polite, unassuming teacher named Danyl Johnston took to the stage. And from that moment I knew that the rest of the series was completely irrelevant.

Singing “With a little help from my friends,” the 27 year old school teacher Danyl didn’t just light up the stage – he lit up living rooms throughout the UK! The guy sang, no performed, like a seasoned entertainer of twenty years or more! His voice and his act in it’s entirety, captivated not only the audience on the screen, not only the judges, but every family watching the X-Factor in the UK.

So why am I writing this article? What does this have to do with film? Honestly, absolutely nothing. But it made damn good television, and whether or not this guy wins the competition he damn well deserves a contract – and if he doesn’t get it, it’ll be a sad, sad loss for a world of music loving, performance junkies like me! If you haven’t seen the episode then I strongly suggest you do, fast forward past most of it, all you need to worry about is the final ten minutes – because within that time you’ll forget absolutely everything else, without exception, while you watch a future pop idol strut his stuff on stage!