World Idol 1 - Kurt Nilsen

Beautiful Day

Kurt Nilsen, a plumber and father of two, went along to the Norwegian Idol auditions.

"Your voice is terrific but your not a pop idol," one of the judges told him.

After Kurt had left the room a judge said: "He's never going to sell and album."

Kurt was then voted Norway's pop idol - and has sold 75,000 copies of his album.

On World Idol Kurt sang U2's Beautiful Day.

Many of the judges liked the song including the Polish judge, Kuba Wojewodzski. Many of them felt the need to say they thought he was ugly.

The Australian judge, Ian Dickson, told him: "You're one hell of a marketing challenge because you've got the voice of an angel but you look like a Hobbit. If we were looking for Middle Earth Idol I think you'd be an absolutely hands-down winner. But for World Idol I think it's going to be really tricky. What I saw was terrific."

Pete Waterman, the British judge, said: "You gave us a superb performance."

Simon Cowell said: "If this competition was on radio rather than on TV you'd walk it. We've allowed a lot of ugly people to become recording artists. Under normal circumstances you'd never get a recording contract." But then he added: "You have an astonishingly good voice. I think you could be the dark horse to win this!"

On 1st January Kurt was voted winner of World Idol - with maximum points from every telephone vote - except the one from the Pan-Arabic Region.