WALK THE LINE SEES CHAOTIC VOTING PERIOD DURING GRAND FINAL (Exclusive)

Walk The Line experienced some technical errors during the recording of its grand final.

Walk The Line is a new ITV musical gameshow - produced by Simon Cowell - which sees one music act win a life changing prize pot of £500,000.

The musical acts - be they soloists, duos or bands - will take to the stage to perform for the nation, with panellists Gary, Alesha, Dawn and Craig watching on from their front row seats and host Maya Jama from the wings.

But to win the money, talent alone isn’t enough. The contestants will need nerves of steel as they determine whether to cash out or physically Walk The Line and risk it all to stay in the competition.

The grand final - airing on Friday 17th December at 8:30pm on ITV - was recorded on Saturday 4th December at Versa Studios in London.

The studio audience and virtual audience are given less than ten minutes to cast their votes. The studio audience do this via keypads and the virtual audience vote via free phone lines.

However, minutes into the voting period, it was clear that the studio audience were having problems casting their votes on the keypads. As more and more people complained about the problems to the production staff, the independent adjudicator was eventually called in to talk to the audience.

The independent adjudicator has the job of overseeing the vote and ensuring the process is fair and the right winner is declared.

Due to the problems, the audience were issued with replacement keypads and the voting period extended. However, problems continued when some of the replacement keypads also didn't work.

An uncertain, and awkward, few minutes followed as people scrambled around the studio. In the end, each person was issued with a working keypad and they were able to cast their votes.

All the votes were verified, with each person strictly only allowed to vote once. In the end, all the votes were counted and the winner of £500,000 was revealed by host Maya Jama.

Nobody is to blame for the error - "that's life" as the audience was told - but given the final of Walk The Line was originally planned to be live, it's a shame it was only down to the studio and virtual audience of hundreds to decide the winner rather than the whole country.

The virtual audience were dismissed before the winner was announced.

Walk The Line begins Sunday 12th December at 8pm on ITV, and continues every night until Friday 17th December.