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Sinitta says she invented pop group TV show format, not Simon Cowell or Little Mix

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 8 November 2019

As Simon Cowell attempts to go head-to-head with Little Mix in a battle being fought out via rival TV shows, a new contender has entered the ring. Cowell’s old mate and 1980s pop star Sinitta claims that she actually came up with the idea of putting a pop group together on TV before either of them started developing their latest telly projects.

Earlier this week Simon Cowell made a last minute change to the next planned outing of his ‘X-Factor’ franchise in the UK, so to make it a direct rival to Little Mix’s new BBC talent show, in which they will create a new pop group.

But now, as the battle heats up between these two pop group creating telly programmes, Sinitta claims that she has been working on a similar show since last year – and that Cowell is well aware of this.

In The Sun earlier this week, Cowell said that he was approached last year by Little Mix’s management company Modest – with whom he has collaborated a lot over the years – to co-produce ‘Little Mix The Search’ for broadcast in 2021. However, he claims, he turned it down because he was already planning to launch ‘X Factor: The Band’ in late 2020.

Then Cowell and Modest fell out for some reason. And last month BBC One announced it would air ‘Little Mix The Search’ as part of its… 2020 season. Had Modest and the Mix brought forward their show to gazump his? No one knows. But Cowell says it was that announcement that prompted him to bring forward ‘The Band’ into an early 2020 slot originally intended for a version of ‘X-Factor’ featuring former winners of the show.

So, Cowell is now set to get his pop group search on air first. But did he come up with the idea first? Or was Modest actually first with this concept? Neither actually. Because, according to The Mirror, Sinitta started working on a talent show that puts together new girl groups and then pits them against each other before either of them. She even filmed a pilot a year ago, which she then pitched to the MD of Cowell’s Syco company, Tyler Brown.

“We created our show late summer 2018”, she tells the newspaper. “I showed the original idea to Tyler at Syco Music, then a little bit to Simon”.

They didn’t take her up on the offer to get involved, but she has nevertheless since filmed the entire series, apparently, and is now attempting to sell it to TV networks.

I’m pretty sure that isn’t how you’re supposed to do it. But whatever, she came up with the idea first. No one had ever before thought to put a show on TV where a new pop group emerges the victor. Except that one that created Girls Aloud all those many years ago, of course. Not to mention all the others.

Basically, there are now three sides arguing over who came up with an idea in 2018 that someone else did better in 2002. And people say the pop talent show format is dead.