By
Sarah Bull
Last updated at 11:02 PM on 30th December 2011
He was the fresh-faced young teen who wowed the public with his soulful voice on the 2007 series of The X Factor.
But now former winner Leon Jackson is virtually unrecognisable, as he showed while posting a saucy shirtless picture of himself on his Twitter page.
With a thick beard and donning a beanie hat, Leon, 22, looked more like Jude Law than his former clean-shaven self in the picture.
Who’s that man? Former X Factor winner Leon Jackson looks worlds away from his former self in this saucy shirtless snap he posted on his Twitter page
He accompanied the shot with the caption: ‘My birthday suit ;)’
Spitting image: Leon’s beard and hat made him look just like Jude Law
Leon, who was mentored by Dannii
Minogue on the TV talent show, has been fairly quiet over the past
couple of years, and was last year named the 2nd biggest reality TV flop after another former X Factor winner, Steve Brookstein.
Despite winning thousands of fans
with his appearance on The X Factor, Leon was dropped by record label
Sony in 2009 after his debut solo album Right Now failed to set the
charts alight.
Since then, however, Leon has been
working on new material after teaching himself to play the guitar and
piano. During a recording trip to Los Angeles, the Scottish singer
teamed up with various songwriters in an attempt to reinvent his sound.
After performing a set of acoustic
tracks at the Scottish New Music Awards in September, it is expected
Leon will release his second album sometime next year.
In a recent interview Leon denied
reports that he had called X Factor a ‘curse’ on his life, insisting:
‘If it wasn’t for the X Factor then I wouldn’t be a working musician
right now, so I owe a great deal to that show.
‘I have obviously worked hard since
then but I am thankful to the people who invested in me as a person on
the show and have continued to support me since then.’
And asked how his musical style has
changed since the show, Leon said: I think I am a million miles away
from what people perhaps know me for. In my opinion, I was so new to
music and I had never had any experience or any inkling as to what type
of artist I wanted to be or where I wanted to go.
‘I was pigeon holed into a specific genre that I felt deep down that wasn’t me.’
Reality show star: Leon with former mentor Dannii Minogue on The X Factor back in 2007, and performing with her sister Kylie on the show’s final
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Former X Factor winner Leon Jackson unrecognisable in saucy shirtless Twitter picture