By James Hibbs

Published: Tuesday, 12 April 2022 at 12:00 am


We’re now mere days away from the return of Britain’s Got Talent after a year-long hiatus, and hosts Ant and Dec have been teasing what we can expect.

The hit talent show is back on ITV on Saturday 16th April 2022 at 8pm, and as always first up we’ll see the weekly auditions shows.

It was during one of these auditions back in 2009 that the world first came to know Susan Boyle, and when speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press for the upcoming season, the hosts were asked whether there would be a similarly “phenomenal” act this year. They both responded with an emphatic: “Yes!”

Ant elaborated to say: “The guy that came on that surprised us, we didn’t expect him to do what he did. In answer to your question, yes. There’s quite surprising moments throughout these auditions.”

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Britain’s Got Talent 2022
Syco/Thames/ITV

Dec continued: “You never know what’s coming next. And sometimes it’s the most unlikely people who are very kind of unassuming and very quiet and they go on there and they become a different person, exactly like Susan did all those years ago. And yeah, we’ve had one or two those this year.”

However, the pair, who have hosted the show since it began in 2007, did stress that the acts can come across differently on screen than they do on the day, leading Dec to question whether they’ll have the same impact as Susan did.

He said: “We’d never seen that before, so whether it’ll have the same impact… but there’s certainly quite a few acts that you would draw comparisons to in that way that you don’t expect them to be quite as good as they are.

Ant concurred, admitting: “You never know what’s going to excite the viewers until it goes out because it sometimes feels very different in the room and then it goes out and you watch it with family and they’re like, ‘Meh!’ but on the day it’s fantastic.

“Maybe that’s because they came after a lot of bad talent. You never know until it goes out but it certainly felt pretty special.”

Britain’s Got Talent will air on ITV and ITV Hub on Saturday 16th April 2022 at 8pm. You can also get a 30-day free trial of ITV Hub+ on Amazon Prime Video here.

Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.

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