Nancy!

Regular readers of this blog who are interested in such things (hello Marcus!) will have observed that I watch some of the Saturday evening talent shows in the UK, but rarely comment on them until they are nearly at an end. Basically, I don't really care about the things until it gets down to the final few.

And so "I'd do anything" nears the end and, as usual, I have a last minute switch of loyalties and a last minute disappointment.

You see, I've been thinking that Jessie was clearly the best for most of the series, but she seems to have lost it a bit in the last couple of weeks and Samantha has just got better and better as time has gone on. And so the last minute switch of loyalties - I approached Saturday evening's show wanting Samantha to win, and to be joined by Jessie and Rachel in the final. I've been thinking that Jodie should be voted off for several weeks now, but the public seems to like her.

So what I was expecting last night was for Samantha and Jodie to be voted into the final and for Jessie and Rachel to face each other in the singoff (and I would then have expected Andrew Lloyd Webber to have saved Jessie). That's what I was expecting. On the basis of the actual performances on Saturday I thought the singoff should have been between Jodie and Jessie as Rachel and Samantha were both excellent on Saturday.

But of course my opinions and expectations were both wrong and (on the basis of this weekend's shows) the best two performers had to do the singoff. And of course ALW had to save Samantha.

And it was at that point I found myself absolutely gutted that Rachel was out of the show. Her final performance of 'As long as he needs me' was completely over-acted, over-emoted, over-cockneyed and over-everything-elsed, but was absolutely brilliant and the best send off of anyone in the series so far. She should have been in the final. Furthermore, in all the interview bits this weekend, she came across as the nicest of the four (ok, they're all hugely ego-tastic at this stage, but she did have a degree of humility that Jodie and Samatha particularly are lacking).

So what will happen next week? Well, I'm back to wanting Jessie to win, but won't mind if Samantha does. However, I fear that Jodie will win the public vote and go on to star in the west end show (and then burn out after 6 months and vanish from the public eye). Of course, the others will all get stage work, I have no doubts that Samantha will be a leading lady in something big before she's 20 - lets face it, she's already done the audition for Wicked if Kerry Ellis ever decides to stop doing it... but only time will tell. And I'll probably be wrong, as usual.