Piers Morgan has claimed that people didn’t vote for Susan Boyle in the Britain’s Got Talent final, because of the huge amount of publicity and hype she received all over the world.

Writing on his blog, Morgan said: “I’m only sorry that the extraordinary tidal wave of publicity she attracted meant so many people got either bored or irritated by Boyle mania and decided not to vote for her as a result.

“I genuinely believe that if she had been on one of the later audition shows, rather than the first one, she would have won easily.”

He added: “The British, and I’m as guilty as everyone else, like nothing better than building people up, and knocking ‘em down again.

“But the good news for Susan is that we also have a tendency to feel sorry (and slightly guilty) for people after the ‘backlash’, and they usually end up even more popular than they were before.”