X Factor's Gary: 'We're sick of Adele!'
Gary Barlow says he's sick of chart-topping star Adele's songs because so many X Factor contestants chose her tracks for auditions. And he revealed that he has been confronted with numerous versions of his own hits - including one performed by a Barlow lookalike from a tribute band. The Take That star said he had even told Adele he has had enough of her music - and she sympathised. In an interview with BBC Radio 1 breakfast show host Chris Moyles, Gary said: "This year has been all Adele - we're sick of Adele. "She came to one of the Wembley shows and I said to her 'I've got to be honest; I'm really sick of your album because it's all that's been played at X Factor'. But she completely understood. And Lady Gaga, we've really had enough of them two." Gary - who joined the show for the first time this year - said he'd joked with judge Kelly Rowland about how big a star he must be when his songs have been performed. "We've had a few people do Take That songs, and we had one guy from a lookalike Take That band - and he was me," he said. "It wasn't like looking in the mirror. And also I could kind of tell that Kelly was hearing the song for the first time. So I said to Kelly 'this is how enormous I am in this country'." Gary said he consulted with ex-judge Cheryl Cole before he accepted a role on the ITV1 show. He said: "She was brilliant, she really told it me like the TV company hadn't told it to me. She told me how long the audition days would be, and the frustrating times, and what was difficult and what wasn't."
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.