Simon Cowell: 'Thank goodness I didn't hire Lily Allen as an X Factor judge'

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Eric Garcia

Washington Bureau Chief

She’s brash, outspoken and opinionated – but Simon Cowell says he’s pleased he didn’t hire Lily Allen as an X Factor judge.

The pop mogul’s comments come after Allen criticised “music industry corruption” on The X Factor after Cowell gave Fleur East Mark Ronson’s unreleased song “Uptown Funk” to perform during Saturday night’s show.

Allen tweeted she was suspicious that Fleur East sang the song in the semi-final before it was released by Sony, the partner label of Simon Cowell’s Syco.

But Cowell has dismissed Allen’s tweets, saying she should “stop bleating”.

He told The Mirror: “Why not be happy for another artist and say congratulations instead of thinking of some stupid conspiracy theory.

"Lily should stop bleating on about all this. Fleur needed this break, got the chance, she totally killed it."

He added that he had previously asked Allen to be a judge on the Saturday night entertainment show, but was pleased he decided to turn her down.

“The irony is I spoke to Lily about being a judge. And from what I took from the meeting, she was seriously considering it. Thank God I said no. She’d be a barrel of laughs.”

Mark Ronson was forced to bring forward the release date of “Uptown Funk” following Fleur East topping the iTunes download chart with her version of the song.

The original version, which features Bruno Mars, has overtaken Fleur East to take the number one slot on the iTunes download chart after it was released on Tuesday.

During Fleur East’s performance, Allen tweeted: “Well done to Sony for managing to get a not yet released song on theirs sung on prime time weekend telly.

“It is an amazing song. Fleur did it justice but it’s still a great example of music industry corruption.”

The singer has since removed the tweets from her Twitter timeline.

The video for “Uptown Funk” debuted on YouTube in November, and was due to be released as a physical single in January as part of Ronson’s new album Uptown Special.

The release date was brought forward by five weeks by Ronson’s record label Columbia Records, which is part of Sony Music alongside Syco.