At one point tonight Simon said that he wasn't a fan of previous contestants auditioning for the show again because the fact that they didn't win previously just proves that they aren't good enough.

On that basis, I wonder if previous contestants should either be banned or should stop auditioning.

If nothing else, it would streamline the audition process as the number of contestants would be seriously reduced.

Alexandra won after coming back, I think they forget that.

Simon needs to use returning contestants to either bait the other judges for rejecting them before (e.g Paul Akister) or to create extra tearful eliminations (a certain Miss McCabe springs to mind).

So even if Simon doesn't like them, he needs them to play their parts in the annual storylines. So I don't think they'll ever be banned.

Plus, the talent pool is looking pretty shallow these days, so these contestants are needed to make up numbers if nothing else.

It's a bit weird cos he tells half the contestants to go away and come back when they're ready! I think he was just saying it for dramatic effect and also he must see a load of the same auditionees year on year that we don't see, it'd get wearing..

I think one of the Wand Erectioners was a returnee too.

I think it depends how far through the process they get.

There are probably many people who just keep coming back, every single year. Maybe one year they'll get through the first round of auditions, the next year they'll hope to go one better. They're never going to stop.

Higher up the scale, if you get as far as judges' houses, you're probably never going to come back and win.... but even then, you could change a lot between, say, 16 and 22.

Yep, Liam Payne.

As always with Simon he'll say something different from one moment to the next depending on whatever narrative he wants to push at that particular time. it's the same sort of contradiction as between 'we're looking for the finished article' and 'we're looking for someone with potential'. Or half the time he'll say something disingenuous just to set up so that he can be 'proved wrong' and do his little humble face and say 'I made a mistake, that was INCREDIBLE' - it's all about creating drama, false epiphanies and wooing the viewers to invest emotionally.

A polite way to describe him would be 'mealy mouthed'. A less polite way would be 'full of shit'.

As was Jade from Little Mix.

The winner of American Idol this year, who, tbh,absolutely blows everyone on this season of X Factor away vocally and is IMO the best rock vocalist ever to bother with such a show, was a returnee.

Melanie McCabe was robbed last year

Haha sorry I still feel bad for her

Alexandra did just that

Poor Melanie. She is trying her hand in America now i hear.

Well he often tells people to "come back in a year or two". His views change with the wind depending on the story he's pushing..

This is just Simon having to much of a swelled head to to admit that they get it wrong alot of the time , especially in the later stages such as at Judges Houses . The talent looks thin on the ground this year and they may be begging some of them to come back next year . Some of the best voices on the show this year have been rejected before

Yes, people like Rachel Kerr and Chloe Thwala who are streets ahead of some of the contestants that have been put through are already gone. Says a lot about the lack of good musical knowledge that the producers of this show have.

More annoying is when he tells Louis he was wrong to send a contestant home in a previous series.........its a cheap shot and an insult to the viewers intelligence as quite clearly the decisions about the make up of the live show contestants is a production decision and not down to the judges.

It shows that the judges are there just to pass comments, but not actuualy to make the decisions on who goes through. Farcical really.

lol too bad he sold less than Candice Glover. CANDICE FREAKIN' GLOVER. It also makes me feel better about the state of XFUK because for all of James Arthur's follies, I'm pretty sure he sold more than 14,000 copies of his album

Yes, Simon, you shouldn't have come back.

You are right there.

This brought a huge smile to my face

Alexandra did it, but she was the exception rather than the rule, and even then she really had to fight for what she wanted. Both during the show and after it.

Agree, her and Little Mix (and I guess James) were the only three winners to have to work hard and gain votes throughout the show... James was in the B2, Little Mix climbed through the voting order and % as time went on and Alexandra was not very safe in the first half of the series. So, yes, Alexandra was a returnee but she didn't get the, "oh she's a returnee, she needs to go far" vote, she got better and it reflected in the votes. Week 8 when she sang Toxic and Listen was the first time she topped the vote, she had come 6th, 7th, 6th, 6th, 2nd, 4th and 4th in the previous 7 weeks. Once in Week 7 being one place away being in the B2.

The other winners... Shayne, Leona, Leon, Matt, Joe, Sam B all were dominating the votes from the first week of live shows so not much was stopping them.

Was Leon really dominating the votes? It seems astonishing with hindsight.

Pretty sure there was a source about him dominating and everyone being shocked about it.