THE Masked Singer champion Natalie Imbruglia was almost foiled by her own son as they travelled to the UK together.
The singer, who took home the winning title as Panda over the weekend, revealed her two-year-old nearly gave it away before she was unmasked.
Natalie, 47, told fans on This Morning that her young son Max was the only member of her family that knew the truth about Panda.
Speaking on This Morning, she told Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary how she lived to regret telling her young son.
“I thought I would be safe to tell my two-year-old son because he can’t speak yet,” confessed the mum-of-one, who filmed the series last year.
“I was showing him pictures of me as Panda. Then we were at the airport coming back from Australia recently, and this little girl had a suitcase with a panda on and he goes ‘Mummy, mummy.’”
Luckily for Natalie, nobody connected the dots between her and Panda, and her secret was kept secret until Saturday night’s final.
Explaining how she kept her identity under wraps throughout the show, the star said she put on an American accent throughout the competition.
“I had an American accent the whole time,” she told the ITV hosts. “It’s not that great but it was fun doing it.”
Despite her son almost spilling her secret, the Torn singer concluded that it was him that made her take part as he “loves pandas”.
“I actually did it for my son,” she concluded. “I thought, how fun to do that for him because he loves pandas, so I chose to be panda.”
Fans of the show were left delighted seeing Natalie unmasked last weekend, as they were reminded of an iconic X Factor audition.
Viewers of the guessing game show were reminded of the time Natalie appeared on The X Factor more than a decade ago.
The former Neighbours star took the place of then-pregnant judge Dannii Minogue for the auditions at Birmingham’s NEC back in 2010.
Former best friends Abbey and Lisa – known to audiences as AbLisa – made history on the show when they stopped singing to have a fight.
The audition promptly came to an end when Abbey punched her pal in the face, before they both stormed off shouting at each other.
It was all sparked by Natalie offering up her criticism to their audition, where she told them: “The singing was not great girls.”
“Who are you, may I ask?” Lisa sassily clapped back, before Abbey turned around in shock, horrified that her friend had insulted Natalie.
Abbey stood open-mouthed before punching her friend in the face and then storming off in the moment which has gone down in TV history.
Fans of The Masked Singer took to Twitter to recall the hilarious scenes, saying they are “always reminded” of it whenever they see Natalie.
“Every time I see Natalie Imbruglia now I think of the time she was a guest judge on The X Factor and a girl from an awful duo after being told no said ‘sorry but who are you?’ and her friend punched her in the face,” one viewer wrote.
A second chimed in: “Just think, if the girl from X Factor had waited 12 years before asking Panda/Natalie Imbruglia ‘who are you?’ she probs wouldn’t have been elbowed in the face.”
“It’s the lady who AbLisa from X Factor didn’t know,” a third joked.
