Britain’s Got Talent aired its live semi-final at 6pm on Saturday night, May 16, bringing the show forward because Eurovision was scheduled later on the. The early slot did little to soften the mood in the studio when Wei Yamin took the stage and KSI hit the red buzzer during a performance built around several dance music bangers played on the pipes.
Wei Yamin’s act was met with a split reaction in the room, but the sharpest blow came from KSI, who told the contestant: “No… I’m sorry, yes you added fire. It still didn’t make it good. All I’m saying is, you can’t polish a poo and that was poo.” Amanda Holden also pressed her buzzer and said, “I just don’t feel like that’s something I want the Royal Family to see.” The crowd answered with boos, prompting Ant to step in with, “A little bit of class wouldn’t go amiss,” before Simon Cowell joined the criticism by calling Wei a “warm up act” and saying he did not think the performer would reach the final.
The comments landed inside a format that still carries real stakes. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent receives £250,000 and a place on the Royal Variety performance, and Ant and Dec told viewers at the start of the episode that Cowell held the golden buzzer that week. That mattered because if he had not used it, the public would have been able to send two acts through instead of one.
The friction was plain. This was a live semi-final in front of an audience that was already primed for a contest, yet the judging quickly turned into a rejection that left the studio split between laughter, boos and an open argument over taste. Holden’s line about the Royal Family and Cowell’s dismissal of Wei as a warm-up act made clear this was not just about one performance going wrong; it was about how harsh the show’s judges are willing to be when the cameras are live and the competition is narrowing.
For Wei, the question now is not whether the act drew attention. It did. The real test is whether enough viewers will see the performance as memorable in the right way to carry it through to the final, or whether the judges’ verdict has already closed that door.
