I have always wondered if they have ever been a favourite going into final. But messed up when they had to sing with someone else. And lost because the viewers prefered the other singers duet

Since they started publishing the results in 2008 you can see most winners had it easy, most were topping the vote the last few weeks so what duet they had probably didn't matter.

JLS are maybe the only exception, they won their Semi Final, but then Beyonce turned up to duet with Alexandra, but she did win by a decent margin so its hard to say what effect it had.

people complain about recent series being boring, but forget that Matt Cardle won every week of his series but the first one (where he came 2nd) despite heavy competition that year, and more recently Sam Bailey and Nicholas McDonald locked out the top2 all series.

JLS is probably the only one, especially as they were originally meant to sing with Rihanna

Rhydian was favourite his year, but the duet with Katherine didn't work while Kylie wowed with Leon.

Then to cap it all the winners song suited Leon more than Rhydian.

Rhydian was favourite but was given Katherine Jenkins whereas Leon got Kylie - his mentor's sister.

I think the result of that series is what caused them to ramp up the manipulation.

Yes - JLS. JLS were 2nd in the vote each week throughout much of the series while Alexandra was coming 6th and 7th, but she pulled back and turned it around in the last few weeks.

The final was onlt the second week she topped the vote though, and Beyonce was a big part of that. This was back when the final aired on one night, not split over two, which had an impact too.

JLS maybe because of Alex's duet with Beyonce. But definitely Rydian after boring Leon actually did pretty well with a better duet with Kylie.