Who is Alisah Bonaobra? Wildcard joins X Factor live shows

Age: 22

From: Philippines

Bio: The young singer already has quite the career. She placed second in the Philippines' version of The Voice and now she's through to the live shows on The X Factor!

• Everything you need to know about how to vote on The X Factor
• The X Factor weekly results - who was eliminated and who won the Sunday night prize?

How did Alisah Bonaobra get to the live shows?

The word rocky road doesn't even begin to cover it.

When Alisah Bonaobra performed in a group at Bootcamp, she was told it was a no and that she hadn’t made it through to the next stage of the competition.

Whereas all of the other hopefuls looked a bit sad and left the stage, Alisah wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Falling to the floor and bursting into tears, she begged Simon and the other judges to give her another go. She drew so much sympathy from Nicole Scherzinger that the judge left her seat, went to comfort her on stage and asked what she wanted to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOowDVdyDj8

And then, just like a scene from a naff film, Alisah spontaneously burst into a few bars of We Belong Together from Mariah Carey. It came from absolutely nowhere and it was actually a bit cringe.

But it turned out that bursting into tears worked and miraculously it worked and she got a pass through to the next round.

Well if at first you don’t succeed, cry, cry again.

At the end of Bootcamp there was egg well and truly on Simon’s face when Alisah returned and gave a gravity-defying performance of Defying Gravity from Wicked and rendered the judges speechless. Very deservedly, Alisah then went through to the Six Chair Challenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLLLNIyric

What happened for Alisah at Judges' Houses?

There were more tears from Alisah when she was told at Sharon Osbourne's Judges' Houses that she hadn't won a place in the final.

But unsurprisingly, she was the act from the Girls category who was voted through to the live shows by viewers eager to see more of that incredible voice.

The X Factor airs Saturdays and Sundays on ITV.