Singer Max Stone was briefly booted out of the Overs’ Six Chair Challenge tonight and he admits he “owes everything” to the Wembley Arena crowd for getting mentor Simon Cowell to change his mind.

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“I owe everything to the people that were in the room there,” 27-year-old Max told RadioTimes.com. “They’ve given me a chance, really.”

The fifth judge was well and truly in attendance, a defiant roar of “bring him back” filling the arena as the judges attempted to continue with the rest of the auditions.

“As soon as I went backstage I heard the echoes of the audience chanting for me. It was just brilliant.”

I was in the room myself and the most surprising thing was the fact that this particular audience (myself included) hadn’t even seen Max’s Six Chair audition. He’d been sat on the chair since the previous day’s filming waiting for the rest of it to play out. But Max just seemed to capture the crowd’s attention and they wouldn’t let him go.

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And a U-turn from the boss, that’s quite something, isn’t it?

“I’ll remember it for the rest of my life, the first thing he did was apologise for the things he said. He said that he’d made the wrong decision and he could clearly see that based on the crowd,” Max explained.

“He gave me a big hug and just apologised for putting me through that. It was nice to see that he was taken aback. At the same time, I understand what he was saying and why he was saying it. Really, there’s just things with myself that I have to step out of and be confident showing who I actually am. That’s something that I definitely walked away from that evening and have grown from.”

Max says he’s keen to show it was worth it when it comes to Judges’ Houses.

“They believed in me. That’s why now, in the next stage, I just want to do everything I can to prove that it wasn’t the wrong decision.”

And you better believe he wants to win the competition after spending years gigging and honing his craft both in London and Sweden.

“I’m in the competition to win. That’s just the way I am. I’m a perfectionist. Whatever I do I want to do as well as I can.”

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The X Factor continues next Saturday at 7:30pm on ITV

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