[Neil Jones]

Probably worth remembering the cat won't actually win anything, being a CGI fictional creature, its more about the illusion. Much like puppets.

Although that being said, somebody's clearly got too much time on their hands to create a character to audition for a talent show and get it past the initial behind the scenes audition before the filmed ones...

Most contestants are scouted beforehand and are invited to audition, if that even happens. If there's any truth in Tom Ball being involved, you also have to question how that partnership came about.

I don't doubt there's a copious lot of scouting - that's just the process of ensuring you can fill six/seven/eight/however many audition episodes the network wants, and if it was done purely on auditions they'd probably only get two shows out of those anyway.

Like they say, all of television is a lie.