Firstly, I am actually shocked to the core. Upon hearing the result late Saturday evening (from someone who shall remain nameless for fear people would think he has no social life), I assumed it went to deadlock. Peering bleary-eyed at yesterday's repeat I saw it was in fact Louis and his bleedin' deciding vote... What were you at, little fellah? Laura sang AND played the piano?! While Ruth managed to butcher a G 'n R song in an attempt to save herself. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Ruth, but don't tell me Louis was hypnotised by the boobs too.

Moving on to Mariah. You know how some of the X Factor finalists broke down when she finally descended the stairs for their meet and greet (here's looking at you, Alex). Well, I would too if I'd been waiting for six hours for the pleasure. A show "insider" offered: "I'd heard that Mariah was bad, but thought it was just rumours. Boy, was I wrong. We couldn't find her for six hours, she had more staff than the Queen (25 in total, according to other reports) and then she threw a strop about the dressing room." The Sun continued with: "Bosses refused to give her a better room because they had run out of time. Our source said: 'I don't think anyone has told Mariah 'No' before'" (presumably 'cause she's too busy saying it herself. Seemingly she refused to do the deed with her current husband Nick Cannon until they were married. No wonder he had her up the aisle within two months. Mariah is qouted as saying: "It's not that we had NO intimacy, we just didn't have complete intimacy. It's just me, and my feelings... I just thought that it would be so much more special if we waited until after we were married. And it was, and it still is." Yeah, because you've only known each other since February).

I'm surprised Mariah wasn't also miffed about the sorry performance her wind machine put in on the night. We're used to seeing her tresses blown sideways by an artificial gale, but it looked like a load of production assistants were just offstage blowing wildly and flapping their cue cards. They should've just asked Louis to bend over. And it wasn't just the wind machine that did a less than sterling job - I'm going go out on a limb and say Mariah's vocals were pitchy *ducks*... While the armchair critiques are flying; Rachel was also pancake flat in parts - she was probably spared as people are petrified of what she'll do once ousted from the proceedings...