Britain’s Got Talent returned at 6pm on Saturday night, May 16, with an earlier start because Eurovision was due later on the. The live semi-final quickly turned into one of the show’s sharpest rows of the series when Wei Yamin performed on the pipes amid fire effects and was hit by red buzzers from KSI and Amanda Holden.
Holden cut in with a line that landed as hard as the buzzer itself, saying she did not feel it was something she wanted the Royal Family to see. KSI was even blunter. He told Yamin: “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.”
The reaction did not end there. Ant then told Alesha Dixon that “a little bit of class wouldn’t go amiss,” a remark that underlined how quickly the exchange had moved from critique to confrontation. Simon Cowell later joined in with his own withering verdict, calling Yamin a “warm up act” and saying he did not think the performer would make the final.
Cowell said he liked Yamin, liked the songs and liked it when he went higher, but said the act did not do enough differently and that “having two people with fire extinguishers, that wasn’t enough.” He added that he had been expecting something bigger and said it felt like the audience had seen the same thing before. For a show built on live reaction, the moment gave the semi-final its clearest reminder that Bgt is still at its most combustible when the judges disagree in public.
The timing mattered too. The episode was moved to 6pm because Eurovision was airing later that evening, pushing Britain’s flagship talent contest into an earlier slot on a busy Saturday. The winner of the series will still take home £250,000 and a place on The Royal Variety Performance, which keeps the pressure on every live appearance now that the final is drawing closer. Simon Cowell is understood to have the golden buzzer this week, adding another layer of attention to the judge whose comments already set the tone for the night.
That is what made the clash around Yamin cut through: it was not just a bad reception to one performance, but a sign that the semi-finals are now narrowing the field fast. Viewers tuning in for Bgt saw a stage show with fire, pipes and fast verdicts, but the strongest message from the panel was that spectacle alone will not be enough to carry an act to the end.
For Yamin, the path ahead is now simple and difficult at once: persuade the audience that the performance the judges dismissed as a warm-up act had more to it than they were willing to see on the night.
