Entertainment

Familiar faces return for Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions

The spin-off series will see past winners of the talent show from around the world competing.
The spin-off series will see past winners of the talent show from around the world competing. The spin-off series will see past winners of the talent show from around the world competing.

Familiar faces from the Britain’s Got Talent hall of fame – including Paul Potts and dog act duo Ashleigh and Sully – will return to screens this weekend as ITV launches its spin-off series.

Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions will see past winners of the talent show from around the world competing against each other to be crowned the ultimate champion.

One of the show’s most successful acts, Potts, will transport judges Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden back to his first audition in 2007.

The former Carphone Warehouse employee, who won the first series of Britain’s Got Talent, will battle it out with the other eight acts to win one of two places in the show’s finale.

Ashleigh, who was winner of the sixth British series – the year Alesha Dixon and David Walliams debuted as judges – will perform with new dog Sully following the death of her companion and winning mate Pudsey in 2017.

Viewers will remember Connie Talbot’s rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow in the very first series of the show, which moved Holden to tears.

Connie Talbot
Connie Talbot Connie Talbot (Ian West/PA)

The six-year-old came second to Potts and returns 12 years later to perform an original song to an audience of thousands at the SSE Arena, Wembley.

One of Cowell’s “favourite acts ever”, Storm Boogie, complete the line-up of British acts in the spin-off’s first episode.

But it is not just stars from the British TV show joining the spin-off, as a daredevil father and daughter duo draw gasps from the judges and the audience on the wheel of death.

Sand artist Kseniya Simonova – who won Ukraine’s Got Talent in 2009 – joins Indonesian spooky illusionist The Sacred Riana and Australian comedy duo the Nelson Twins.

Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions airs at 8pm on Saturday.