Joe McElderry has admitted that he has grown quite close to Simon Cowell over the course of the X Factor and insisted that the music mogul is much more laid back than people think.

“I was quite starstruck when I first met him,” McElderry told The Times. “He’s one of those people you think, ‘Oh! Simon Cowell’. But as I’ve got through the competition, you get to know him a lot more and he’s really, really nice, a laid-back man, comes down to the studio and has a chat with everyone.”

McElderry also insisted that Simon is responsible for creating some amazing and otherwise unachievable careers for wannabe artists. He said : “People forget that this man gives people who’d never get an opportunity a massive, massive platform. I definitely wouldn’t ever have got into the industry otherwise. People like me and [finalist] Olly [Murs], we’re not songwriters, and even if we did write songs, people wouldn’t even give us a look. They’d say, ‘Yeah, okay, no’.”

He continued: “I know X Factor gets flak. It’s, ‘Oh, Simon Cowell makes money’. But it’s not about that, really. I’m so grateful that he’s made this programme, because I’ve had an opportunity in the music business, and I admire that.

“If anything, he’s not given enough credit for what he does.”