Sharon Osbourne says it's Simon Cowell's fault 'The X Factor' has hit ratings low

·Contributor

16 November 2018 at 5:17 am

Sharon Osbourne with Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh (Credit: ITV)

The latest series of The X Factor has plumbed record ratings lows this year, and ex-judge Sharon Osbourne reckons she knows why.

And it’s all down to show boss Simon Cowell’s decision to keept changing the show’s format.

In September, when this year’s series began, it recorded the lowest launch ratings in its 14 year history on ITV.

Speaking about the tumbling audience in an interview with The Sun, Cowell said the situation was ‘funny’.

But Osbourne told the newspaper: “Unfortunately, not out of malice, but I am only saying this because Simon’s quote thinks it is funny, that the figures have dropped, and dropped and dropped through the course of the show.

“I am not saying it was all me at all, but (it’s because of) his decision to change the show again and again and again.”

Osbourne was set to make a comeback as a guest judge on the show, but was fired after an expletive-filled rant about the series – and Cowell – during an interview with US radio host Howard Stern.

During the chat, she slammed the show’s contestants and called Cowell a ‘fat-faced motherf**ker’, though she’s claimed that show bosses paid her anyway.

“Later they call me in and say ‘we don’t really think we need you’ and I’m like ‘fine – just keep sending the money’. It is fine they are paying me, they had to,” she said.

She added in an interview with US radio hosts Jim Norton and Sam Roberts: “It was very weird, because I had a contract for this series, and… the goal posts kept moving.

“‘We want you, we don’t want you, yeah, we want you and… we don’t know what we’re gonna do with you’. And then it was ‘yeah, we know what we’re gonna do, you’re gonna judge the judges’… and it just didn’t feel good.

“And I think it was because they had to pay me a lot of money, and I was there, and they thought, ‘well, we’ve gotta use her for something’. I think.”