PASADENA, Calif. -- This is startin...

PASADENA, Calif. -- This is starting to assume like a generic job description: Handsome Englishman wanted to make Americans make an outcry Must seem ruthless.

"I think it's a rather nice trait, actually," Piers Morgan says. "We are remarkably outspoken, very brutal, very honest"

And extremely successful. "America's Got Talent," with Morgan speaking public is the No. 1 TV series this summer the Nielsen ratings say. (It airs at 8:30 pm Wednesdays and 8 pm Thursdays through the whole extent of WMAQ- Channel 5.) "So You Think You Can Dance," with Nigel Lythgoe is conclude And "American Idol," with Simon Cowell, is No. 1 in the regular season.

All of them interlock. Cowell and sight Warwick produce "Talent," with Morgan as the unreserved judge. Lythgoe and Warwick bring "Idol," with Cowell as the arbitrator

"There's always this difficult twinkling of an eye when they have three American umpires and ... it's all quite friendly," Morgan says. "And then he [Cowell] rings up London and earns another nasty little Brit."

Friends equable collide. This summer "Talent" and "Dance" have overlapped each Wednesday and Thursday, putting Warwick and Lythgoe in direct competition.

"We went to educate with each other in Liverpool," Warwick says. "We literally sat nearest to each other when we were 13 years antiquated ... we were both choreographers; we were the two directors ... We've known each other for in such a manner long."

And now all of them are in the blunt-Brit business. "We don't care a bit about being booed" Morgan says.

The American umpires do, on rare occasions, draw a boo or a tear. They also diocese the devastation that comes with defeat.

"We went backstage and everybody was crying you realize that it is as it was an emotional thing for them and their families," says onetime TV star David Hasselhoff, united of the American judges.

And then, in the American tradition, Hasselhoff tried to soothe feelings. "I said, 'Guy you just got 13 million viewers. Now it's your opportunity to advance out and use this.' "

That reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] points naturally to Hasselhoff, who has said he grew up being an instinctive salesman, like his dad. It's also natural for Brandy, who grew up in the body of christians where her dad was music minister. the couple seem happy when an act gives genuine talent.

"I just have a passionate affection for watching unique, different people be derived onstage," she says.

Morgan also says he's happy when there's real talent. single in kind example was an 11-year-old; "I just got chills when she sang," he says.

When things pass bad, however, he feels no obligation to make nice.

It could be a regional thing, he grants. Londoners live in tight confines; like the public in some U.S. cities, they attend to to be direct and abrupt Morgan was a London newspaper columnist, as was his friend, Anne Robinson. When they started doing television -- Morgan with "Tabloid Tales," Robinson with "Weakest Link" -- they didn't prove to be gentle.

And when Morgan came to "America's Got Talent," he kept that trait. single of the rawest moments came with a duo that paired a young harmonica player with his older brother, a former drummer who sang and played guitar.

The referees promoted them to the finals, moreover not before Morgan flatly prompted the harmonica player fire his brother. The kid promptly began to call

"I've got three son in such a manner they cry quite a parcel at what their father secures up to," Morgan says. The harmonica player "is excessively very talented ... It was like his brother was a spare part of the wedding, you know

"I think the big brother knew I gazeed in his eye and I could give an account of he'd been waiting for this question all his life."

Then it came from the unmarried Englishman on the judging panel. American audiences are accustomed to that, further in England the odds change.

If all goe as planned, Morgan says, the British version of "America's Got Talent" will first attempt in September -- with Morgan and Cowell one as well as the other as judges. Nastiness -- or brutal freedom from fraud -- may flow.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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