Louis Walsh has admitted that when he takes the X-Factor hopefuls he has adopted to his "house" for further coaching, they don't really go to his house. It's not the first time it's been reported that TV bosses rent a fake home for Walsh because he won't let the pop wannabes near his real home, though Walsh has said that that is also true of all his fellow judges.
Walsh told BBC Two's 'Graham Norton Show': "That wasn't my house. That wasn't Sharon's house or Dannii's house or Simon's house either. Sharon sold her house to Christina Aguilera, so that was a rented house. Mine was a rented house. I wouldn't have had all that rubbish in my house - the stuff on the walls and the lights and all that".
Coming so soon after all the "all TV is faked" controversies of late, the admission is potentially damaging for ITV, though they are trying to get out of it on a semantic technicality. A spokeswoman said: "The contestants are invited to a house. We call them the judges' houses, not the judges' homes. We have never said they are the judges' real homes and it has been this way for the past four years".