Scherzinger 'waiting for flowers'

Nicole Scherzinger has joked that she is still waiting for flowers from boyband One Direction after helping put them on the road to success on the X Factor two years ago.

The former Pussycat Doll, who was instrumental in turning the five solo singers into a group in the 2010 series, said their success is "wonderful".

"It's crazy to see how massive they are. They just performed at the Olympics and it just feels like yesterday we were auditioning them," she said.

The boyband have enjoyed chart success on both sides of the Atlantic and their first album went straight to number one on the billboard chart.

Nicole joked: "I haven't received flowers yet. I'm waiting."

She joined fellow X Factor judges Louis Walsh and Tulisa Contostavlos at the launch of the new series. They posed for pictures in London before the four-month talent search returns to screens on Saturday.

Nicole, who was born in Hawaii, said she notices a lot of differences between UK and US singers.

"Typically in the US, we have big diva singers like Mariah, Whitney, like Melanie Amaro who just won (The X Factor USA) last year and in the UK they are a little bit more singer-songwriterly and folkier.

"You've got a lot of wit, a lot of character, a lot of storytelling that they bring to the table when they're performing and when they're writing so it's not so much about the big voices, it's more about the character and the tone of their voices here."