But Lauren would be gone if he'd stuck to it on Saturday.

Yes, the only time he's deviated from the public vote in this series was on Saturday to save one of his favourites.

If ALW didn't want Jenny fair play to him but to hide behind the 'dog bonding' session as a reason for her dismissal is silly bordering on cowardly (as in the lion).

I am not a conspiracy theorist but Jenny's song assignments for three solid weeks were dire. Uptempo numbers abounded for all but her.

And every weeks comments of "but you're so good at uptempo numbers...", but they wouldn't give her one.

I've seen that YouTube clip of Jenny doing 'Mercy' by Duffy - she would have been BRILLIANT doing it on OTR and it very well could have kept her on the show.

Well he's hardly going to deviate to save someone he doesn't like

The point I was trying to make is that if he wasn't choosing who to send home then the show wouldn't look much different.

The show's format is such that he gets the final say, I don't think him picking the 2nd least popular girl once is enough basis to criticise him for constantly going against what the public want.

Would you have preferred him to say something along the lines of 'look Jenny I know you can sing but you can neither act or dance I don't think you have a career in the West End'.


Also not being able to work with a dog in a show that requires you to be constantly on stage with a dog is a pretty good reason to loose out during the casting.

But he couldn't say that. The evidence hasn't been shown. Leaving aside whether it would be fair to show any, the evidence on the show has been the opposite, Sheila marked Jenny out for acting really well and there's nothing that showed the opposite.

One issue with the songs has been whether they showed the right emotions but thats been Sheila wittering, often contradicted by Charlotte, and Sheila has criticised everyone.The second has been whether the performance is big enough for a stage but, as some people there have posted, she's been focused on the TV - that just raises big issues about two audiences judging two different things and who the girls should aim at. It doesn't tell you who could do what on a stage. They could say she is too under-stated in her acting, but they then expose the elephant in the room and the contradiction that Danielle is more understated and tends to act with her eyelashes. The third was the nasal issue but that hasn't been mentioned in weeks and ALW had already said she was tone and note perfect on songbird. They tried a fourth issue that she was too small to register on a big stage - but they can't pursue that either as Steph has just been praised for looking small enough to play 12.

He may have a reason and it might even make sense, or not - but no one knows what it is. In those circumstances coming up with something silly was probably the best he could do. In IDA they ended up with arguments that were just plain untrue when he wanted to get rid of people for no good reason - like claiming Sarah, the most consistent, was "inconsistent" or when someone claimed that being small she was unfit to play a youthful vulnerable Nancy.....

Sorry but that's a false choice. ALW is free to say whatever he pleases except when he's making excuses for his own lack of nerve.

As for the dog segment that was hardly definitive.

A) The dog was working with more than one actress in a short stretch of time and bound to get distracted eventually. You can say that the dog ran away from Jenny but unless you are a canine clairvoyant who knows what the circumstances were?

B) Most of the girls simply grabbed hold of the dog's collar whereas Jenny did not.

C) Steph's dog segment was nearly as disastrous and ALW said as much....but he never brought it up again as he did with Jenny (before the sing-off).

But we saw after she was eliminated that she could work perfectly well with a dog on the stage!

However, this dicussion is a bit daft. Whether people like Lauren or not (and I admit that I do) she is a better singer than Jenny and could probably step into the role more easily at the current time. It makes perfect sense for ALW to save Lauren over Jenny.

Also those people who moan that he went against the public - is that not actually part of the premise of the show? Public chooses bottom 2 - ALW chooses which one he prefers.

Seems fair enough - particularly when voting is clearly close enough that despite being bottom of the voting for first show, Lauren overtook at least two other in time for the second show. Bottom line is that I think there is little to choose between everyone from public pov, so ALW would be daft to get rid of arguably the best singer in the show when he has the opportunity to save her!

I have no objection at all to ALW saving Lauren over Jenny; as you say, it's the rules of the show that he can save whichever he prefers of the bottom 2, and Lauren is a fantastic singer. What does annoy me is that while the phone lines were open for voting we got shown footage of a task that we are told indicates that Jenny has no rapport with dogs. If voting is indeed close, that could easily have put her in the bottom 2 when she would otherwise have been safe. And then, once she's gone, we find that Jenny is perfectly capable of working with a dog. We were, if you'll pardon the expression, sold a pup.

Wonder if this means that the dog who ran off stage won`t get the part either ?

To be clear, I think the VT was absolutely set up to hit Jenny's vote - as soon as you saw it you knew she was a goner (or at least that was what the hoped-for response was!)