There are lies and damn lies and crooked tv shows.

Why is it a conspiracy? The OP was not far off. BGT is KNOWN for putting through crap acts. But no normal person, after being told they are shit but they'll be put through to the live audition anyway and have everyone laugh as they get buzzed off would not go on the show. So they get bigged up at the unaired auditions in front of the production crew. Their jokes get laughed at more, the least funny ones laughed at the most. He gets put through, gets put on stage and have him get buzzed off for not being good enough. Go through the editing rigmarole - cutting out the funnier parts, adding in the obligatory "complete silence falls over the audience" shot and the eye rolls from Simon and hey presto, you've got the scene. Edit in the audition from the funnier guy after job's done.

Yes, but editing is not the same as having a completely fake contestant, is it?

I don't think he actually was a fake contestant though. His annoyance seemed very genuine to me.

On America's got talent they had a comedian that was so bad the audience started booing him and he turned on the audience threatened to hunt them down like a dog etc , then he actually started to be hilarious and got through . The guy on Saturday seemed to be trying to go for the same type of act but was far too slow to turn things round on the audience , that's how I saw it anyway .

This is the guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNCKJ3xSBI

Simon Cowell and Carmen Electra.

Almost all of tonights show so far....

so was it a set up along the lines I made up or more as Len 112, post 29 said?

When you go to an audition show that they're filming there are only eight or nine acts on; that carry on you see on the telly with hundreds and hundreds of people waiting behind the scenes is done months before, to whittle down the talent till the shows they film, with the judges present.
Also, the warm up chappie on the final filmed auditions asks you all to applause and cheer before you see anyone on stage, so they can film it and the programme makers can edit the audience reaction in, to whichever act the producers have decided they want to do well.

Telly is all smoke and mirrors. Anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't be allowed out on their own.
But so what? BGT and Strictly and The Voice and X-Factor and all the rest are entertaining for us viewers. And showbiz has always been a cut-throat business. Always will be.

Editing audience reactions, priming the judges and auditionees etc. are part and parcel of these shows. I thought we'd all gotten this out of our system by now!

The only thing that really grates with me is the TOWIE-style conversations between acts, where people just happen to be mic'd up backstage and just happen to say dialogue that suits the flow of the show at that time...

The only thing you didn't put in was that 99% of the audience shots used during an acts performance probably never even happened during that performance! Cameras are trained on the audience at all times and the shot you see of someone grimacing when an act performs could actually be taken from a bad joke the warm up guy told!!

the whole show is a glorious set up. The show contacted someone I know saying Simon was desperate to meet their group having seen them perform live.

It was a very specific act which they didn't think BGT would get, but they were hounded by producers telling them that Simon was looking for an OTT very camp performance. They bypassed all of the prelim auditions and went straight to the TV panel.

They got a mixed reaction from the panel but the crowd loved it. When it was aired on TV, they cut out any audience cheering so that it looked like they bombed, and they edited in judges comments from other performances saying it was the worst thing they've ever seen.

Very insightful but so common in all of these reality shows. Got to make it look dramatic somehow!

I've known for years that these types of shows are manipulated by the editors as to how they want the contestant to be perceived. Even more so since my son started working in television. Anyone who can't see it should watch Alice Fredneham audition on the voice and then on BGT. It was like a totally different person