Ant & Dec say Jai McDowall victory 'proves BGT is not fixed'

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Ant and Dec used Jai McDowall's surprise victory in last night's Britain's Got Talent final as an opportunity to toe the party line and insist the show is not fixed.

The pair - who present the show - were responding to anonymous allegations made on the internet last week that bookies favourite Ronan Parke has long been onSimon Cowell's Syco books and was being groomed for certain success on the show.

The Geordie duo also declared Jai a worthy winner in an interview on ITV's More Talent.

Dec said: "He was the dark horse of the competition. All the attention has been surrounding Ronan... It was a great semi-final performance and a great final performance, but a shock."

"It's amazing. Where we're standing, you can see the pulse on the side of the contestants' necks. I can see how nervous they really are. I could see on Jai that he was going twenty to the dozen. It was a lovely moment [when he won]."

Ant added: "He's a lovely-looking fella, a really nice guy, but I didn't really like his song tonight. But he is a nice guy and the public go for that. They just go for nice people."

"It just proves that these shows are not a foregone conclusion. They say this person is dead certain to win or that Simon wants this person to win. They say it's fixed. It's not."