Simon Cowell has apologised to Dannii Minogue after he joined irrational ITV viewers in complaining that her innocent reference to a contestant's bisexuality was offensive.
During Saturday night's prime time show, openly bisexual performer Danyl Johnson - who came out via an interview with the News of the World in August - unnecessarily changed the pronoun in a song from 'he' to 'she'.
Minogue congratulated him on his vocals, but commented that the grammatical switch was not needed. She said: "If we're to believe
what's in the papers, there was no need to switch the gender reference."
Subsequently, viewers hailed Minogue a "bigot" and called for her to be sacked. Some even went as far to liken her comment – which Johnson himself wasn't offended by – as worse than Anton Du Beke's "paki" reference on Strictly Come Dancing.
Last night, Minogue apologised to the small minority of complainers. "It was meant to be a humorous moment. An openly bi-sexual guy
singing a song that is lyrically a 'girls' song'. Danyl and I were
joking about the very same thing in rehearsals on Friday, so it carried
on to the show."
She went on: "I spoke to Danyl straight after the show last night and he wasn't offended or upset."
Simon Cowell, who lambasted her at the time, apologised on air and defended Minogue, leaving the complaining public with egg on their face.
Johnson said: "'I was not at all offended by Dannii's comment. We're
completely cool about it and chatted after the show. I wasn't upset,
it's just so overwhelming being up there on the stage and hearing Simon
be so positive!"
Johnson, 27, was also criticised by Cheryl Cole for being "cocky", the same judge who was charged with racially aggravated assault in 2003, after claims she punched a black toilet attendant and called her a "jigaboo".