A SCOTS waiter has snubbed Simon Cowell’s X Factor – telling talent scouts from the popular TV show that it has “lost its way”.

Singer songwriter Matt McAllister, 23, initially thought someone was playing a joke on him when he was asked to meet producers of the ITV show after his single took the internet by storm.

Mr McAllister, from Campbeltown, Argyll, who penned and performed Scottish Winds, about an old classmate who died in a car crash, said: “Music is important to me and you have to place your music in the correct hands.”

At the meeting, he said he told them: “The X Factor has kind of lost it’s way,” adding: “I wasn’t going to be a yes man.”