I love the new judges. I love the Top 24. What talent this year, especially the men!

All my fears about Simon Cowell leaving are a distant memory. Idol has survived losing what I thought was its biggest asset. Hurray!

I’m really excited now as we approach the Top 24 live shows. This next 3 weeks is actually my favourite part of the whole thing. I love seeing them all perform live for the first time. I love the process of whittling 24 great singers down to 12 amazing singers. I love that the boys and girls are kept separate to start with. And I love that at this stage we get loads and loads of episode time, with 3 long episodes per week. It's exciting and a bit of a marathon.

I'm hoping The X Factor will flop in the states. I think X Factor is a much tackier show and Idol deserves to be number one. It was too greedy of Simon to do this just to make a bit more money, and I would love for Idol to enjoy continued success while X Factor flops.

This year they are cutting down the numbers in one week rather than over a number of weeks.
It will be 24 down to 13, 10 chosen by the public and 3 others from the judges.

Apparently the audience got bored with the long winded process of eliminating contestants....

Owch. That’s a real shame. As I said, that was my favourite bit!