ROBBIE Williams is primed to join this year’s X Factor. The superstar has been in secret negotiations for weeks and show chiefs are confident he will put pen to paper. 6 Robbie Williams has been in secret negotiations to join the X Factor for weeks and show chiefs are confident he will put pen to paper Credit: PA:Press Association He is expected to replace Louis Walsh, axed from the judging panel on Thursday. X Factor boss Simon Cowell, 58, has been trying to hire the former Take That man, 44, for a decade. Robbie Williams channels Sinitta for X Factor appearance His crusade intensified after the singer impressed him as a guest judge with Sharon Osbourne in 2016. A show insider said: “Robbie has always been Simon’s dream signing. 6 Robbie and Nicole Scherzinger pictured with Lauren Silverman and Simon Cowell 6 Robbie has already appeared on X Factor, above, and Britain's Got Talent Credit: ITV “Now it appears he’s finally going to get his man. “Over the past 12 months they’ve become close, as have their wives who are also pals. This is why Robbie Williams would make a brilliant judge on The X Factor “There’s a deal on the table and Robbie is keen to do it. The hope is that the deal is days away from being signed and announced.” The Sun also understands Livin’ la Vida Loca singer Ricky Martin, 46, and former judge Mel B, 43, are in the frame to be judges. 6 Livin’ la Vida Loca singer Ricky Martin, 46 is also understood to be in the frame for a seat in the judging panel... Credit: The Mega Agency 6 Mel B, 43, is also being considered for a role on the show's panel Credit: Splash News Robbie will follow in the footsteps of former Take That band-mate Gary Barlow, 47, who was head judge on the ITV show between 2011 and 2013. Eddie String gets cheeky with Gary Barlow on the X Factor He was guest of honour at one of last week’s Britain’s Got Talent’s semi-finals. In the ad breaks he was seen sneaking off backstage with Cowell for private chats. Simon even pointed him out to the audience, telling cameras he was a “very good friend of mine”. 6 Robbie will follow in the footsteps of former Take That band-mate Gary Barlow, 47, who was head judge on the ITV show between 2011 and 2013 Credit: Rex Features Robbie Williams pretends to by wife Ayda Field's butler as she interviews Simon Cowell on Loose Women And earlier this month Robbie’s wife Ayda, 39, interviewed the music mogul for ITV’s Loose Women. She said her children Teddy, five, and Charlton, three, had become close with Simon and partner Lauren Silverman’s son Eric, four. Robbie has just completed the latest leg of his world tour The Heavy Entertainment Show. Two months ago we revealed Simon was plotting a major revamp. And on Thursday we revealed judge Sharon, 65, will only do the live shows this year. Louis, 65, will also not be returning. He appeared on all but one series since its 2004 launch. Robbie Williams posts new video for The Heavy Entertainment Show<doc-sep>Harps are fine in moderation, Feel is a certified pop monster and you can’t go wrong with chucking some opera on to a power ballad like Angels, yet Lost in Showbiz cannot help but feel Robbie Williams’ World Cup opening will be regarded by future historians as a tragic missed opportunity. That opportunity would be for the Rudebox hitmaker to perform 2016’s soaraway, Top 70 comeback single Party Like a Russian, a feat of pop preposterousness that sampled Prokofiev, implored listeners to “have it like an oligarch” and, in one breathtakingly audacious 11-second segment, managed to rhyme refutin’, disputin’, Rasputin, “brutes in Louboutin”, highfalutin’ and “boys put the boot in”. Yes, it even had a line about boys and boots. Like football boots! Having missed this week’s open goal with a clumsy panache not witnessed since Diana Ross at USA 94, Robbie’s next move should be a dead cert. There are reports that, fresh from upsetting Jimmy Page over planning permission for an underground swimming pool, Robbie is set to join The X Factor’s judging panel. It’s the perfect match: the days of either the singer nor the show being able to walk a single to No 1 seem long gone; each has enjoyed on-off relationships with Gary Barlow; both make little sense to teenagers; and neither made it in America. Both are entertainment behemoths in freefall – household names too big to fail, but having a decent stab at it anyway. There’s a chance we may be on the verge of witnessing a pop cultural tandem skydive, but could these two negatives perhaps, as in the spooky world of mathematics, become a positive? This has been a long time coming, with Robbie having long shown Sinitta-level determination to insert himself into the X Factor world, to the point where in 2011 he appeared at Barlow’s judge’s house literally dressed as Sinitta. We won’t, apparently, just see Robbie joining the panel: he will be accompanied by his wife, the actor and sometime Loose Woman Ayda Field. They will become The X Factor’s first husband-wife judging team (in the UK at least – of which more shortly) and may well be the first two UK X Factor judges to have enjoyed intimate relations, although perhaps we should wait on the content of Louis Walsh’s long-threatened tell-all book before we draw a line under that particular supposition. At this stage, it is Lost in Showbiz’s solemn duty to remind the world that three years ago, on the other side of the world, X Factor viewers met Natalia Kills, an entertainer who first rose to prominence in a Jasper Carrott sitcom, and her double-rudely named musician husband Willy Moon, who barely rose to prominence at all. In a parallel universe Kills & Moon might have enjoyed success with a series of slightly gothic romance novels, but in 2015 they were judges on X Factor New Zealand. After one performance, Kills took exception to a contestant’s decision to wear a suit and announced that the poor chap had copied her husband, who apparently invented tailoring. “Do you not have any value or respect for originality?” Kills asked. “It’s cheesy, it’s disgusting. I personally found it artistically atrocious. I am embarrassed to be sitting here in your presence having to dignify you with my opinion.” Kills’ happy-go-lucky husband offered: “It feels cheap and absurd, it’s like Norman Bates dressing up in his mother’s clothing … I feel like you’re going to stitch someone’s skin to your face and kill everybody in the audience.” Kills continued: “It’s disgusting, makes me sick. I can’t stand it.” Kills concluded by stating that she was “ashamed to be here” – not a predicament that troubled her for long. While this sort of live TV moment is precisely the sort of feedback the UK’s X Factor could use in order to get back on front pages, at the time all did not go well. Co-judge Melanie Blatt echoed viewers’ thoughts when she offered Kills a summary of events via Twitter (“Sorry love, you’re a twat”), and within days both Kills and Moon were fired from the panel. So, let’s hope Robbie and Ayda don’t get too carried away behind that desk and let’s cross our fingers that the pair’s critical dissection of endless Ed Sheeran covers will instead give way to a primetime, Saturday night slanging match over whose turn it is to put the bins out, whether or not crisp packets qualify for recycling and when IF AT ALL the back door is going to be fixed, because no domestic along these lines has ever not been entertaining. In any case, the Williams and Field double-pronged attack on Saturday night TV makes absolute sense for Robbie. With all due respect to that collection of album offcuts he released with the artwork that showed him climbing a tree without any pants on, Robbie’s greatest artistic creation of the past half-decade did indeed involve Ayda and consisted of him live-tweeting the birth of the couple’s second child. One particular highlight was a video showing Robbie parading around the hospital bed belting along to his own song Candy as it blasted out of speakers, then stroppily turning off the music when his heavily-in-labour wife refused to engage in a call-and-response section. It was an absurdly comic two-hander with flashes of humour, truth, despair and banging tunes, which is surely all any of us really want from The X Factor. Illustration: Nick Oliver Peter Andre gets on board with Ace venture In “for your consideration” news: there’s a new Thomas the Tank Engine film on its way and Peter Andre, very much the Minnesota skyscraper raccoon of British popular culture, incessantly climbing but never entirely certain if the public is cheering him on or shouting at him to stop, has a starring role. Whether Andre’s cinematic venture will top Ronan Keating’s turn in the abysmal 2014 Postman Pat movie – with its curiously political plot about skilled workers being replaced by automated delivery solutions – remains to be seen, but Pete has a trick up his sleeve: acting lessons from Al Pacino. Well, sort of, but it’s a bit complicated because Peter Andre is, after all, a deeply complicated man. Andre says he paid £85 for an online acting course from Pacino, adding that Steve Martin also does a really good one about comedy. “You learn so much within minutes,” Andre gushes. “They’re incredible lessons.” The Steve Martin detail would seem to suggest Andre is talking about masterclass.com, a knowledge-sharing venture (or “money-making exercise”) that you should never visit online unless you want it popping up in your Facebook feed from now until death, and which has roped in Martin along with other inexplicably huge names such as Helen Mirren, Deadmau5 (sans helmet), Marc Jacobs and Diane von Fürstenberg to record video content that punters then pay to access. Confusingly, Pacino isn’t listed on their site. In fact, the only substantial online record of any Pacino acting masterclass is a spoof video from comedian Peter Serafinowicz, which culminates with “Al Pacino” embodying the persona of a student’s dead cockney uncle. Curiously, and this may explain some of the confusion, Serafinowicz as Pacino looks startlingly like Peter Andre, and one is left to wonder whether someone has simply conned Andre out of the best part of £100 in exchange for a comedy YouTube link. We may only get to the bottom of this mystery if and when the Thomas movie arrives with a yellow car called Ace – for this is Andre’s role – bellowing in an unconvincing east London accent. But let’s not get bogged down in the detail because even if Andre has been scammed, who’s laughing now? Peter Andre, that’s who. Andre is now a proper movie star. Not just that, but he has recorded a song called Free and Easy for the Thomas film’s soundtrack, doubling the number of Oscars for which he will be eligible. This could be the greatest slide into Hollywood glory since the Rock, so who cares where that £85 went?<doc-sep>Keen X Factor viewers were left surprised after Louis Walsh confirmed he has quit beloved ITV show following his 13-year stint. But ITV bosses have already taken the steps to replace entertainment manager, 65, as The Sun has reported that Robbie Williams will join the show as a new member of the prestigious judging panel. According to an insider, the former Take That star, 44, has 'always been Simon [Cowell's] dream signing', with the 58-year-old music mogul bidding for the star for a decade. Stepping in: ITV bosses have already taken the steps to replace Louis Walsh, as The Sun has reported that Robbie Williams will join the show as a new member of the prestigious judging panel (pictured October 2012) The source went on to discuss Simon and Robbie's friendship: 'Over the past 12 months they’ve become close, as have their wives who are also pals.' They continued: 'There’s a deal on the table and Robbie is keen to do it. The hope is that the deal is days away from being signed and announced.' MailOnline has contacted Robbie and X Factor representatives for comment. The She's The One hitmaker has performed on the talent show on a number of occasions, with his most recent performance taking place in the tenth series of the show in 2013. Shocking: Keen X Factor viewers were left surprised after the 65-year-old confirmed he has quit beloved ITV show following his 13-year stint (pictured December 2017) Robbie was also a guest judge in series 13, where he helped Sharon Osbourne choose her final three contestants in the Over 25's category. These reports come after Louis confirmed he will not be returning to The X Factor. The Kiltimagh native has been the ITV talent competition’s most long-standing judge, having been on the panel in all but one of the show’s series since its conception in 2004, but on Thursday he revealed he is bowing out of the show. He said in a statement: 'I’ve had a fantastic 13 years on The X Factor but the show needs a change and I’m ready to leave.' Familiar face: The She's The One hitmaker has performed on the talent show on a number of occasions, with his most recent performance taking place in the tenth series of the show in 2013 Helping out: Robbie was also a guest judge in series 13, where he helped Sharon Osbourne choose her final three contestants in the Over 25's category Louis won’t be leaving Thames and Syco for good though, as although he won’t be working on The X Factor any more, he will still be the head judge on Ireland’s Got Talent, which returns in 2019. He added: 'I’m looking forward to another series of Ireland’s Got Talent, going back to my day job as a manager, writing my memoirs and seeing the world!' Whilst Thames Managing Director, Amelia Brown, added: 'Louis has been a huge part of The X Factor’s success since it launched and remains a good friend of the show. Gone: Louis announced he will not be returning to The X Factor after 13-years on the show on Thursday Popular: The entertainment manager has been the ITV talent competition’s most long-standing judge 'His contribution cannot be overstated. We would like to thank him for all he has given to the show over the years and look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.' Meanwhile, fellow judge Sharon Osbourne will also be taking on a different role in the upcoming series of the show, as whilst she will still be on the panel, she’ll only be present for the live shows. She said: 'I can’t wait to get back to the judges’ desk. I love the new format.' Old times: Walsh has been on the panel in all but one of the show’s series since its conception in 2004 (pictured) Farewell: 'I’ve had a fantastic 13 years on The X Factor but the show needs a change and I’m ready to leave,' he said in an official statement Reflecting on Osbourne's return, Amelia continued: 'We are very excited Sharon is taking on a new role on the show and we can’t wait to see her as a judge on the live episodes. 'This is the start of a new era for The X Factor. I am really excited about all the ideas we have for the coming series including, of course, the new judging panel.' Despite his length run on The X Factor, Walsh had only won the show once, with Shayne Ward in 2005. Solitary success: Despite his length run on The X Factor, Walsh had only won the show once, with Shayne Ward in 2005 Soaked: The win came after Walsh temporarily quit the show mid-series following a series of spats with his fellow judges, notably Sharon Osbourne, who drenched him with water while they recorded an episode But the win came after Walsh temporarily quit the show mid-series following a series of spats with his fellow judges, notably Osbourne, who drenched him with water while they recorded an episode. The judge was notorious for favouring novelty acts, much to the consternation of head judge Cowell, and his legacy will include the likes of Jedward, Wagner and Johnny Robinson. He is also responsible for mentoring JLS, who went on to sell 10 million records worldwide following their appearance on the show. Annoying: The judge was notorious for favouring novelty acts, much to the consternation of head judge Cowell, and his legacy will include the likes of Jedward Guaranteed: Speaking in April, Walsh revealed head judge Simon Cowell had already told him he was assured of a role alongside Sharon Osbourne when then show returns in the autumn Speaking in April, Walsh revealed head judge Simon Cowell had already told him he was assured of a role when then show returns in the autumn. He told the Mirror: ' have a signed, water-tight contract, as has Sharon Osbourne. Of course you’ll see us back on the show. 'Sharon and I have a three year contract, and we’ve only done two, so this will be our third year. Simon doesn’t break contracts.' Creator Cowell will be returning to the series alongside three new judges, who are expected to be announced in due course.<doc-sep>
Robbie Williams could be set to replace Louis Walsh on the X Factor judging panel. The former Take That star, 44, is said to have been locked in secret negotiations for weeks, with show bosses now confident he'll sign on the dotted line very soon. It comes after Louis announced he was quitting the ITV talent show last night. He said in a statement: "I've had a fantastic 13 years on The X Factor but the show needs a change and I'm ready to leave. (Image: AFP) (Image: Liverpool Echo) "I'm looking forward to another series of Ireland's Got Talent, going back to my day job as a manager, writing my memoirs and seeing the world." A source told the Mirror: "Nothing has been signed yet but Robbie is now one of the favourites to become a judge this year. It is very exciting and we feel he will bring a lot to the show." Robbie has been a regular guest on the show in the past, appearing at the judges houses stage alongside Sharon Osbourne in 2013 and 2016 and Gary Barlow in 2011. Speaking in September 2016 on radio, Robbie admitted he had been approached in the past but was unsure about committing to the show for longer. He said at the time: "I enjoy those judges houses days, they are good fun. I am a frustrated judge and frustrated TV personality and for six hours of those days I get to be one. "They have asked me to be a judge and they do but even if I am frustrated, I dont want to do it for 16 weeks or whatever." (Image: ITV) The source added: "Robbie knows well how the show works, especially as his pal Gary was on it for a few years. He has been too busy before with his own music but this year bosses think they might be able to persuade him to do a full series. "There is nothing like 16 weeks filming involved anymore as the show has a shorter run." If Robbie does take a position on the show, he'd follow in the footsteps of his former Take That bandmate Gary Barlow, who headed up the judging panel from 2011 to 2013. Robbie was spotted on TV at one of last week’s Britain’s Got Talent’s semi-finals. In the advert breaks he was spotted sneaking off backstage with X Factor boss Simon Cowell for private chats. Simon even pointed him out to the audience, telling the cameras he was a "very good friend of mine". A source close to Cowell said: "He thinks Robbie could help bring viewers back and breathe new life into The X Factor and that's why he has decided to shake up the panel so much and so late on." Louis, who managed huge Irish boybands Westlife and Boyzone, acted as a judge between 2004 and 2014, then returned in 2016. ITV announced in 2007 that Louis wouldn't be returning to the show, however after just a few days of auditions, Simon brought Louis back onto the judging panel. And earlier tonight, Simon Cowell's ex and X Factor regular Sinitta told Mirror Online she wasn't convinced Louis was done with the show. Speaking at the DIVA Magazine Awards at London's Waldorf Hilton Hotel, she said: "Do you think he really has? How many times has Louis quit X Factor? He says it every year. Do you think it really is it for him? (Image: Getty Images) (Image: Rex Features) "He's said it before and he's always gone back. I could be just a plot. "But saying that, maybe it is time he gave up and made way for someone new. I would miss him and I think viewers will." She added: "People will miss his bottom lip quivering when he doesn't get his own way or when he can't pronounce his contestants' names. "Louis is a genuinely nice guy. Him and Simon are such good friends and if he really has left I'm sure they will still hang out." Livin' La Vida Loca and The Assassination of Gianni Versace star Ricky Martin and former judge and Spice Girls star Mel B are also reportedly in the running for judges' seats. Mirror Online has contacted ITV and Robbie's representatives for comment.