Tessa Prieto-Valdez wins Celebrity Duets

Tessa Prieto-Valdez emerged as grand champion in the grand finals of the Philippine edition of "Celebrity Duets" Saturday night. She brought home the P1-million cash prize while a lucky texter won P20,000 and two Magic Sing microphones. From the eight famous personalities who joined the competition, only Tessa, together with Dr. Hayden Kho and Jessica Rodriguez-Bunevacz, managed to barge into the grand finals. Every week, a contestant who gets the lowest number of text votes is booted out of the competition. First to go was Bb. Pilipinas Universe 2007 Ana Theresa Licaros, then renowned fashion designer Frederick Peralta, next was talent manager Wyngard Tracy. Text votes also failed to save TV host, events organizer and entrepreneur Tim Yap and cosmetic surgeon Dr. Manny Calayan. Tessa was speechless and very surprise when host Ogie Alcasid announced her name as the winner because she was always among those who received low number of votes in the past weeks of the competition. "Did I win?" she asked, adding "Akala ko natawag na naman ang bottom two." "I know from the very start I can't sing but I want to entertain. I really tried my best," she said. GMA senior vice president for entertainment Wilma Galvante handed to Tessa a bouquet of flowers and her prize. White Cross and Street Pals Foundation will benefit from Tessa's win. The grand finals opened with a song number from seven of the eight Celebrity Duets contestants. Then, it was the turn of the three finalists to showcase their singing prowess. Jessica had a duet with Jaya, Hayden sang with Jay Durias of South Border and Tessa with Joey G of Side A. In their second performance, Jessica sang with Cacai Velasquez; Hayden belted out with Verni Varga and Tessa with Kyla. The finalists also had a song number with Celebrity Duets hosts Regine Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid. Celebrity Duets premiered on August 11. The concept of the show is to pair a non-singing celebrity, who is vying for one million pesos for the charity of his choice, with a professional singer. It is an original concept of American Idol's Simon Cowell. GMA-7 bought the rights of the show and sought to bring to the Filipinos a new concept of reality-singing competition for the celebrities. - GMANews.TV