Simon Cowell’s BGT golden buzzer act Axel Blake spent time in a youth offenders’ prison.He said the “toxic and horrible" experience made him turn his life around and follow his dream of becoming a comedian.Axel, 33, was seen on last night’s ITV show getting a free pass through to the live semi-finals.Cowell told him: "After what everybody has been through these last couple of years, we needed acts like you."But dad-of-two and property maintenance worker Axel admits his life could have taken a very different turn.When he was growing up, he got in with the wrong crowd and claimed there was "peer pressure" to do things to keep in with his pals.He became caught up in an altercation with a group of lads and had to spend three months in a youth offenders’ prison.
Axel, of west London, said: “It was heavy in the gang life.“You don’t wanna be a p***k, you want pride and you want respect and it consumed me.“I was around the wrong kind of people, the wrong mentality, my mentality was poisoned. "It eventually led to me going to prison when I was 18...19.”He told ListenNotes podcast: “The governor said to me, ‘You will be back.’ I will never forget.
I thought, ‘Never, never, never.’“It changed me as a person and it changed me for the better. It was very toxic in there. It’s a horrible place to be.”One of his gigs is now on Amazon Prime Video, called I’m Not Gonna Lie.Saturday’s opening episode of Britain’s Got Talent drew a peak audience of 7.2million.Fans were not happy with Amanda Holden's golden buzzer winner, The Greatest Showman singer Loren Allred.Though she didn’t appear on-screen in the hit flick, she lent her voice to Rebecca Ferguson’s character Jenny Lind - a professional opera singer hired by P.
Read more on dailystar.co.uk