As with most reality TV stars, Wagner left X Factor with an ego approximately 1,000 times the size of the one he went in with, which for a man who USED TO HOLD LIONS BY THEIR TAIL wasn't exactly small. While he's been on the show, the Brazilian born goat herder (possibly) has been accused of everything from drug abuse to sexual harassment and yet still remained a firm favourite of the Internet, curators of all things freakish. So what's next for the Mickey Rourke impersonator? Benefit fraud apparently.

Before we get to The Man's attempt trying to keep him down, it's worth posting up a few choice words from Wagner, double-glazing salesman extraordinaire, about love, life and how corruption is the cancer that's killing X Factor:

'The winner might win... but that doesn’t mean you will have a career.”

 

'I don’t think any of them [The other contestants] have any charisma. I am ­wondering if they will get a career out of that... and I think I might.”

 

'I didn’t want to win X Factor. You can’t expect to win because it doesn’t depend on you. The public decides.

 

'I was surprised I was in the bottom three last week. But then, who counts the votes? The public never see the way they voted.'

Unfortunately for him, before he starts his glittering career as a TV 'personality' (and we certainly need more of those) he has to deal with vicious affronts to his honour, as HM Revenue and Customs are now allegedly looking into doing the long-haired lothario for benefit fraud. Wagner however, strenuously denied the claims:

'I didn’t want to be a parasite on benefits. I spent the whole of 2009 applying for jobs and at the time I was 53 and got nowhere.

 

'I came to England in 1992 and until 2008 I never claimed a penny of benefits. That’s 16 years I was paying my taxes and didn’t have any benefits at all.'

 

'I have always had money and had Porsches and Jaguars. Then one day I found myself walking in the rain with my arm in a sling for miles just to save bus fare – and I thought: ‘God, please help me.’

 

'I told the Department for Work and Pensions every step of the way what I earned. It is all absolutely legal.”

In many ways he's like a modern day Samson, with perhaps Simon Cowell or Louis as Delilah. Anyway, here he is performing at GAY with Katie Waissel and a dancer that looks a lot like Sacha Baron Cohen, so it's not all bad news.