Simon Cowell really, REALLY likes young Zimbabwean

A young Zimbabwean is about to become a household name in Britain (and maybe the world), thanks to TV show X-Factor and her extraordinary talent. Her name is Gamu (Gamuchirai) Nhengu and she’s 18.

The new season of X-Factor kicked off with Gamu’s audition in Glasgow in June. In the show, Gamu said it’s her dream to change her family’s life and help her mum who’s a single parent.

Her family’s life has not always been so hopeful. She was just three when her father died in Zimbabwe. In the hope of giving her family a better life, Gamu’s mum relocated to Scotland to study and left Gamu alone to look after her brothers in Harare.

Gamu finally joined her mother in Tillicoutry, Scotland, when she only 13. As a family friend revealed to the Daily Record “Gamu’s had a hard life but you’d never know. She has such a sunny disposition.”

Gamu told the X-Factor judges “I want to be someone. I want to be somebody that people talk about.”

She then nervously performed a funky version of KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Walking on Sunshine’, but her voice was so incredible that the judges looked past her nerves and all four voted for her to stay in the competition.

Audiences saw super-celebrity Simon Cowell gush “that was one of my worst songs ever but you did something different with it. I really, really, really like you! You are very talented” and he called her voice “an old school jazz voice”.

Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell told her “your mum will feel really proud of you. If you were my daughter I would.”

And it’s not just the judges who fell in love with the student from Lanarkshire. She’s making headlines all over the UK, being touted as the “one stand-out performance”.

Earlier this year, in June, she sang with a choir at the Praise Gathering at Glasgow Concert Hall. Someone blogged afterwards that “the star of the show for me was the young 17-year-old girl who just wooed the audience with her version of the old gospel standard ‘Since Jesus came into my heart’…I don’t have her name because we left the programme in the recycling box.”

Someone else commented that “when she started singing it was as if the whole concert hall had been electrified”.

It won’t be long before those bloggers and the rest of the UK will all know Gamu Nhengu’s name.