Bets taken for Northampton magician to win Britain's Got Talent for days after not making semi-finals

Bets were still being taken for a Northampton magician to win Britain's Got Talent despite him not making the ITV competition's coronavirus-delayed semi-finals.

The online betting sites have now removed Sean Heydon from their lists but bizarrely his odds of success shortened after the final 38 were revealed on Sunday (August 30).

Regardless, the time-bending magician was not to disheartened and was pleased to be back performing for the first time since March at the Smoke Street food festival at Duston Mill over the weekend.

"Smoke Street was brilliant - what was also nice was, being from Northampton myself, I know a lot of people in the town and many have supported me through Britain's Got Talent and when I did the live show on the Chron's Facebook page," he said.

"So it was nice to go out and see lots of friendly faces and lots of people were having photos.

"It was my first gig since the pandemic so it was a good three days of seeing everybody and getting my card tricks back out after so long."

Sean wowed the Britain's Got Talent crowd by turning the phone clocks of everyone in the auditorium, including the judges and presenters Ant and Dec, back by nine minutes during his audition in January.

The performance, which aired on the Britain's Got Talent: Unseen programme on the ITV Hub in April, was enough to earn four yeses from Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and David Walliams.

Bookmakers were taking bets at 12/1 for Sean to win the whole thing before the semi-finalists were revealed for the socially-distanced September shows to watched by a virtual audience.

But strangely the odds went down to 6/1 despite the magician not being on the list - with bets still being accepted on Monday and yesterday (Tuesday).

Sean put out messages on his social media pages when he realised people could be wasting their money, urging customers not to bet on him - he is no longer a choice today.

"There have been so many things up in the air recently with the pandemic and I didn't find out until last week but it's fine," he said.

"I did the audition ages ago and that went great and I was told to keep the dates free for the semi-finals but they were delayed by the pandemic and then I found out I wasn't through.

"But the bookies were still taking bets and a few have me as a favourite so I wanted to put something there to tell people not to spend any money but I'm pleased they've not taken me off."

Sean said he is in talks with a production company for another potential show on ITV - but he could not reveal any more details.

And to watch the trick he would have performed in the semi finals, click here.