[cub]

Brilliant!

"The mask has been removed," said Katie Waissel. She was trying to atone for the silly get-ups that had made her a fixture in the bottom two with a stripped-back new look, previewed last week but emphasised now.

So what happened when we got used to the real Katie? It was voted off. The elfin haircut accentuated her Windsor ears and cement-trowel chin, but the problem was that, like most people who try on a series of annoying personas, Katie did so because her inner self was less attractive.

It was the end of a sad and moderately sinister saga. Having consistently denied Katie's manifest lack of puff for the sake of some tawdry headlines, Simon Cowell claimed her desperately befuddled mangling of Everybody Hurts would have been "fantastic" if only it had been more than two minutes long.

In reality, if the gulping and wailing had gone on for even another 20 seconds, there'd have been a danger of some viewers doing exactly what the lyrics advise against, and topping themselves to escape the torture.

Previously, poor Katie - alone on stage, with not so much as a dayglo astronaut's helmet to distract us - had made a half-hearted stab at Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon. It was neither sexy nor fiery. Erotic warmth was provided, surprisingly, by Rebecca Ferguson.

Normally, weird over-styling and her natural diffidence make Rebecca rigidly unsexy, despite her looks. It was business as usual for her first song in Rock Week - a clipperty-clopperty, Lighthouse Family muzak version of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, sung apologetically with everything clenched in a leopard-print truss.

Then suddenly, for song two there was a sparkling black minidress, a glint in the eyes and a pelvic wiggle all the more arresting for being barely discernible. Rebecca's Aretha inflections on Satisfaction ("About some yooseless! IN-formation…") were so spot-on, even the judges made the correct comparison, rather than being reminded of Sade/Whoopi Goldberg/Steven Gerrard/whoever.

However, still nobody has had a word about Rebecca's habit of nodding calmly in response to absolutely any comments. "You are a star! I love you!" (Calm nodding.) "You have the best voice in the competition!" (Calm nodding.) "Everyone you know has died in an earthquake, and your hair is on fire!" (Calm nodding.)

Similarly, Matt Cardle's elastic interpretation of Nights in White Satin was the moment when he emerged as the sure series winner, but his stock response to praise - a wobbly, hand-kissing prayer gesture, like someone mocking an Indian waiter - is unacceptable.

For this reason, we must vote for Cher Lloyd. Good as her songs were - bumptious, shouty pop-rap, in straggly gypsy/chav chic - the highlight of the weekend was her look of polite contempt as Dannii Minogue wittered about a problem with the sound mix.

No chance of Cher having to do another sing-off: Wagner effectively voted himself out by going serious. Even hardcore Wagnerians couldn't cope with the sight of his staring eyes and square jowls filling the whole screen as his face shuddered with the effort of Creep by Radiohead.

Mary Byrne suffered the indignity of a sing-off against Wagner. Everyone voted Waggy for eviction. While he excitedly celebrated this 4-0 victory, Mary looked uncomfortable: embarrassed even to be taking part in such a formality, yet aware that - now the weirdos have all gone - she's next.

[stewart64]

At least somebody realises that Matt and Rebecca have no personality, and he concurs with me that Matt is pretty much an assured winner. But he knows Cher is the special one, we have never seen anything quite like her before; but his efforts to drum up support are probably in vain. But I would bet she is the one who has the biggest career ahead, with international stars queueing up to team up with the ''gypsy/chav chic''.

[cub]

X Factor: the semi-final (blog)

Mary Byrne had a textbook X Factor journey. She began as a humble, frumpy supermarket cashier with a scintillating audition piece: I (Who Have Nothing) sung with scorching intensity, raw and pure, note-perfect but soaked in desperate, bottled passion.

A few months later, it's the semi-final. In a Demis Roussos outfit chosen by The X Factor's top stylists, singing too loud and slightly sharp under tuition from The X Factor's top singing coaches, Mary finishes fifth, lurching out of the competition as a mediocre, mildly annoying busted flush, over-familiar and overstretched. That's the magic of The X Factor!

The semi-final couldn't more obviously have been Mary's last appearance if Simon Cowell had stood up and made an embarrassingly ill-informed speech about her time working for him, before handing over a bunch of flowers, a John Lewis voucher for a disappointing amount, and a card full of cursory quips from colleagues who will have forgotten she exists on Monday.

Other contestants benefited from the return of the sob story. Matt Cardle starred in a public information film about the horror of tonsillitis. Rebecca Ferguson reminded us that she's left her kids alone in Liverpool, where by now they're talking in clicks and whistles and living off their own phlegm.

Sadly, even Cher Lloyd was making us play a tiny violin, stressing that she's a normal dream-chasing teenager and not, as dull people think, a stuck-up diva who, like, totally loves herself and that, innit. The message: Cher is not cocky.

Well, I want my pop stars cocky. I want them magisterial, yet constantly on the verge of tears. I want them to suddenly do a rap at inappropriate moments. I want their eyebrows drawn on in pen at a funny angle. I don't want them moaning about not wanting to be a painter and decorator again. I don't want them to be "sincere" or "real".

I want my pop stars, as Cher did this week, to undo all efforts to spin them as "not cocky" by making impossibly sweeping announcements such as "Ballads have been done!", having witheringly stared Dannii Minogue out in response to another useless comment. I want Cher to win.

In fairness, Matt's illness this week gave his performances new levels of excitement. His first, You Got the Love, raised the possibility that the "Tonsillitis! The Silent Killer" movie had been a big fake: he hit all his normal big girly notes, the only sign of weakness being some heavy panting between lines.

But his take on Billy Joel's insulting classic, She's Always a Woman, had knife-edge tension: milk-white and glistening with cold sweat, Matt looked like he might dissolve into hacking coughs at any moment. Sadly he didn't, but it was fun to hope.

My money is still on One Direction to make a late run and win. Voters who drone on about people having "a good voice" will be split between Matt and Rebecca, leaving One Direction's army of screaming children to bring them to power. Their version of Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol's song about having a nice nap, was bland and boring but, unlike Mary and (I fear) Cher, highly marketable.

[cub]

Hilarious!

http://www.radiotimes.com/blogs/1129...l-matt-cardle/

The front-runners struggled with their celebs. As Christina Aguilera howled next to her, Rebecca was starved of oxygen and could barely make a sound. But her being starstruck was preferable to Matt Cardle's attempt to get steamy with Rihanna. That was a virtually unwatchable sexual mismatch.

Rihanna stood statuesque, a goddess with electric pink curls and a tight black dress split to the spleen. Matt stared up at her, beardy, fidgety and squat, perspiring freely in a grey sales-rep suit. He tried to suggestively move his gaze up and down her body, but kept spoiling it by involuntarily poking his tongue out. Then, just as they went into a clinch, Matt did a massive falsetto.