Britain’s Got Talent has come under fire once again after a five-year-old dancer was through to the next round, with welfare groups expressing concern over his capability to handle fame at such a tender age. Backing the concerns of welfare groups were viewers who disapproved the judges’ decision to pass the child to the next round. BGT’s latest criticism comes just a week after the show featured a striptease dancer and a 11-year-old crooning an adult song. The latest public outcry comes a year after nine-year-old Malaki Paul broke down in tears after struggling to finish his song because of nerves on Britain’s Got Talent.

The Saturday’s show saw Simon Cowell joke about the five-year-old dancer named Jordan Nash, by asking him, “How old are you – 20? 21?”. The inclusion of children is a part of the show’s format which has no age limit unlike The X Factor and The Voice where the minimum age is 16 years.

On social networking sites, public expressed their anger over the inclusion of the five-year-old with comments like, “It’s a shame for them, they will always be let down and have no chance of winning. He is only 5!”, and “He was good but he’s going to get his heart broken.”

Although ITV says that there are lot of safeguards in place, it is difficult to predict as to what would go wrong and when a child would find things difficult to cope with. Claude Knights, director of anti-bullying and child protection charity Kidscape, said, “We have in the past been concerned by a trend in some of these reality shows to have much younger children … the main concern being that a young child can’t give informed consent to the consequences of the attention and exposure, to that degree.”

However, father of the Britain’s Got Talent programme’s five-year-old participant said, “It would be a shame to deny any individual the opportunity to display their talent publicly whatever their age.” Is it right to let a five-year-old participate in TV shows?