‘Britain’s Got Talent’ bosses have furiously denied claims young magician Issy Simpson ‘copied’ a magic trick she performed on Saturday (22 April) night’s show.
The eight-year-old magician was seen trying out for the ITV talent show with an impressive routine, including a card trick she used on Simon Cowell, which ended with her revealing the card he’d picked was on her T-shirt all along.
However, another magic act, Carl Leek, has since claimed to The Sun that he performed the same trick to the ‘BGT’ judges a week prior at another set of auditions.
He told the paper he’d believed Issy’s card trick was “literally a carbon copy” of his, and claimed he had received four ‘yeses’ from Simon, Amanda Holden, David Walliams and Alesha Dixon after he’d performed it at the Birmingham try outs.
While Carl acknowledged Issy was “innocent in all of this”, he said he “didn’t understand” how this had happened, claiming he’d also been told footage of his audition would not be aired.
‘BGT’ bosses have since issued a statement categorically denying any element of Issy’s trick was copied.
“Issy Simpson came to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ with her own routine and magic performance prepared, which she then duly performed at her audition,” a spokesperson told HuffPost UK.
“Any suggestion otherwise would be completely false and defamatory.”
‘Britain’s Got Talent’ continues on Saturday at 8pm on ITV.