Beverley Knight has admitted that she worries about The X Factor’s younger contestants.

Speaking on Live From Studio Five, Knight explained: “Any of the bits I’ve watched have been on a catch-up thing. I’m never home to watch the show properly.”

She continued: “The thing that worries me about these shows is you have kids who literally go from serving over the counter to arenas. Everybody knows them. How on earth do you cope? How do you prepare for the adulation and the fame? How do you actually prepare for making music?

“You’re not prepared at all. You’ve got to build. What happens is, you get a lot of kids who kind of model themselves around one or two singers and they’ve got that down, but they don’t know their own voice, and that only comes through the little gigs and the building up. It’s a quick ascent, but to stay there – that’s the thing.”