A POET who auditioned for Britain's Got Talent said she felt like a "rock star" for the day – despite being booed off stage by the audience.

Clare Washbrook said she was shouted at by the crowd as she tried to recite a poem for the celebrity judges at a recording of the hit ITV show in Cardiff.

But, despite the boos, she said she got good feedback from Simon Cowell and sympathy from Ant and Dec when she came off stage.

The 36-year-old, from Belper, said: "Once we got there it was like I was a rock star.

"Anything I wanted I got. The staff were excellent and I felt great.

"Waiting to go on stage I was totally calm and I had been prepared for what was going to happen.

"But the one thing they couldn't prepare me for was the audience."

Clare, who performs under the stage name Poet Boudicca, said her fiancé and two children watched in horror as the audience shouted at her.

She had planned to recite two poems but only managed to get through one.

She said: "I knew what I was letting myself in for and that they hated poetry.

"But when I started the audience acted appallingly.

"I was so overwhelmed by the nastiness that I forgot my lines.

"When you have hundreds of people screaming at you to get off the stage, it's off-putting."

Clare said that Simon tried to quiet the audience but even he could not stop the boos.

"I went on this to prove a point," she said. "But it would have been lovely to have won the prizes and performed for the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance."

Clare first auditioned for the talent show at the Oval cricket ground in London on January 21, alongside her daughter, Madeline Cope, ten, and best friend Charlotte Craddock, 26, as trio the Derwent Mermaids.

But only Clare was invited back to the televised audition in Cardiff on January 29 to perform in front of Simon, Alesha Dixon and David Walliams.

"I was going to perform an amalgamation of two poems, The Big Bang Verse and On England," she said.

"But I was so put off I never got to On England.

"Alesha and Simon were lovely. When I got off stage Ant and Dec said how bad the audience had been."

The sixth season of the show will be screened later this year.