Walsh better with boy band: rejects

5:45pm Sunday 12th October 2008

X Factor rejects Bad Lashes claimed judge and mentor Louis Walsh focused his attention on boyband JLS.

The group - friends from Durham and Hartlepool, Stacey Lincoln, 20, Sophie Wilson, 23, Emily McNamee, 19, and Sam Bennett, 21 - were the first of the final 12 acts to be booted off the ITV talent show on Saturday night and revealed Walsh had told them he does not know how to manage girl bands.

McNamee said: "Louis said 'Look I know how boybands work, I've done it with Westlife, blah blah blah.'

"He said he managed Girls Aloud for a bit and wasn't very good."

Asked if Walsh spent more time with JLS, Bennett said: "A little bit. He loves boy groups, that's his thing. Boy groups are totally his thing."

Wilson added: "We don't really know how many phone calls he made different and stuff but generally he just chatted to them a little bit more and things. Louis generally is better with male boybands."

The band confessed they would have preferred to have had Girls Aloud's Cheryl Cole as their mentor, and even Walsh told them to seek her advice.

Lincoln said: "Louis has admitted to us that he is more boybands and not girlbands.

"So he really knows what to do with JLS, it's easy to choose songs for them and stuff. Whereas girlbands - he said listen to Cheryl.

"So Cheryl was kind of helping us and being a mentor a little bit as well. So maybe if we had of had Cheryl it could have been a bit different."

Editor's Choice