Cheryl Cole helped old friend through to Boot Camp on X Factor

Cheryl Cole has reportedly secretly helped an old friend reach the Boot Camp stage of X Factor.

An inside source told the Mirror that Cheryl had known Austin Drage since 2004, when his old band toured with Girls Aloud and even had a fling with one of his former bandmates.

On the show broadcast on Saturday covering the London auditions, Cheryl enthusiastically voted for Austin to head into the next round of the show, saying “100 per cent yes” after hearing his rendition of Boyz II Men’s ‘End Of The Road’. She told him she was “shocked” by how “soulful your voice was, you hit every note”: “I don’t think we’ve heard the best from you yet and if that’s not your best I’m excited to see what is.”

However the source told the newspaper: “He had a completely unfair advantage.

“He has worked with Cheryl in the past and they are friends, so it seems obvious she was going to put him through.

“In the interests of fairness they should have admitted their friendship.”

Last night a spokesperson for the ITV1 show insisted that while the friendship was kept a secret from viewers, they knew all about it: “He’s always told us he knew Cheryl. This puts him at no advantage.”

Around 180,000 auditioned for the current fifth season of the show, with just a tiny proportion of those people getting through to the Boot Camp stage. Just 24 acts are expected to survive the Boot Camp - one round of which is said to have taken place at the O2 Arena in London last month - and they will be whittled down to just 12 for the final live televised stages of the show.

Earlier in the auditions process, Cheryl refused to comment on a performance by Nikk Mager, who she got to know while she herself was competing on the 2002 talent show Popstars: The Rivals. Crying, she explained: “I can’t do this. It’s going to be a biased, weird thing.”