Britain’s Got Talent winner Jai McDowall has revealed he was left on the brink of bankruptcy within a few years of winning the ITV show.
The 37-year old rose to fame in 2011 becoming the fifth winner of BGT, with the singer pipping 12-year old Ronan Parke to the crown. Despite being criticised by Simon Cowell for his “monotone” voice”, Jai went on to sign for his label, but was soon dropped after his debut album flopped.
Still, Jai pocketed a cool £100,000 in prize money from his success in front of a TV audience of 13million. But soon work and cash dried up, forcing him to move back in with his parents.
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Now, things are on the up again for Jai after he joined vocal troupe group G4, who finished as X Factor runners-up to Steve Brookstein in 2004. The years in between weren’t an easy ride, however.
(Image: itv)
“Afterwards, for the first year, obviously you get all the work and all the good things,” Jai told the Sun. “And that’s when it starts to go south. I had about eight months and then Sony didn’t renew my one album deal and it’s still quite a difficult thing to deal with.”
Jai added that he quickly went from being a “normal guy” to “being on the telly” – something he found as a “mindf***” and “difficult to deal with”. He went on to explain: “It created such a tumultuous time for me that I didn’t deal with it very well. I’ve done OK. Twelve years on I’m still working. But there was definitely a period where it took a dramatic drop.”
(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Jai explained that after he was dropped by Sony, he signed with a few people in Scotland, but made some “bad choices” and “spent loads of money”. He even splashed out on a nose job after suffering damage to his conk whilst breaking up a fight in a bar. “Finances, work, all of that stuff took a very big dive to a point where I did actually think about bankruptcy,” Jai continued.
“It came to a point where, on paper, you’re asset rich, but I was cash poor. I moved in with my parents at the time. I did have property but I had no money. That took a long time and a lot of grit and determination for me to get back out of that.”
(Image: Stirling council)
Jai addressed his previous fallout with Cowell in an interview in 2022, meanwhile, explaining how they buried the hatchet during BGT all stars edition, The Champions. It followed several comments over the years by the music mogul, who said he had been “disappointed” with Jai’s progress, adding: “He wasn’t one of our best ones.”
The Scots singer then defended Cowell as he explained how much he’d done for himself and fellow Scottish BGT star Susan Boyle. “I got the album deal and I got a tour, and I got certain things out of it that I wasn’t supposed to, and I always say to people that I got a lot more than I should have. He didn’t do me that wrong,” Jai added of Cowell.
He then recalled the emotional moment he caught up with him, which left him fighting back tears. Jai said: “At Champions, him and I spoke. It was nice of him to publicly apologise, but we spoke after the show and I was like, ‘Look, everything that happened. It was just a misunderstanding.’ He was like ‘Oh no, I get it. Don’t worry about it. It’s all fixed’.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
