Kenny Petrie’s audition for Britain’s Got Talent began slowly as he delicately opened a guitar box onstage, but soon judge David Walliams was praising him as a rock god. Petrie, it turns out, can shred like no one’s business, and he immediately had the audience going with the iconic Aerosmith riff from “Walk This Way.”

The Scottish company director, however, had a lot more up his sleeve than simply riffs, as he began flying up and down the fretboard while playing a crazy wah solo, and he even slipped in some lightspeed finger tapping in the Eddie Van Halen manner. As the crowd went crazy, he continued to play catchy lick after catchy lick. Petrie’s contagious excitement seeped out on the audience, with Simon Cowell observed beaming from ear to ear with childish joy throughout the performance.