Forget the endless soggy Stevie Wonder cover versions – American Idol is always going to be about one thing.

How much the judges hate each other. Balancing their egos has always been a tricky job – especially when one of those egos is as shrieky and scattergun and genuinely incomprehensible as Paula Abdul - and now it’s all come to a head.

Paula Abdul has told a magazine that she doesn’t really like American Idol now that new judge Kara DioGuardi is on board, and Kara has responded by saying how ‘hurt’ she is. Boy, this is going to be one funny-looking catfight.

If Paula Abdul divides her American Idol memories into seasons – which we don’t think is true, by the way, due to the sneaking suspicion that Paula Abdul fears time as a work of malevolent witchcraft – then this season is easily her worst. Yes, even worse than the season where she broke her face on a dog. It’s that bad.

Of course, having a dead woman turn up on your doorstep will do that to you, but now Paula Abdul is suffering through something far worse – there’s another woman on the American Idol judging panel, and it’s made Paula Abdul so angry that she might actually pop.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike new American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi – currently our two favourites are that she looks like a Norbit version of Enrico Colantoni and that she doesn’t seem capable of saying anything that you wouldn’t find as a message inside a cheap birthday card given to you by someone who doesn’t like you but feels dutybound to send you a card nonetheless – but Paula Abdul seems to dislike Kara DioGuardi just because she exists. Paula told OK! magazine:

“Kara and I have known each other for years and we get along great. But we tried four judges before and it doesn’t work. It takes up so much time for each of us to give our opinion that it slows down the pace of the show.”

You can tell that Paula Abdul means business about this, because that entire speech was full of separate and distinct words rather than one burbled mess punctuated with the occasional cackle and/or manic dolphin squeal. But if that’s what Paula Abdul thinks of Kara DioGuardi, what does Kara DioGuardi think of Paula Abdul?

“Paula has a right to her opinions, but I was disappointed by her comments, and hurt that she did not address them to me in person.”

So what sparked off Paula Abdul’s rampage? As well as the glaring obvious explanation that it’s because Paula Abdul is a gibbering crackpot, some are pointing to comments elsewhere in the OK! interview where Paula suggests that this will be her last American Idol because “I have so many other things I want to do.” Which is a fair thing to say – those few months on American Idol each year really cut into the time that Paula Abdul sets aside for crying and babbling and shrieking into telephones about bowel disorders and turning into a poltergeist in public and generally creeping people out so much that they want to run home and scrub themselves clean immediately after seeing her.

But one thing’s for sure – this American Idol judge-feud is definitely not about ratings. Definitely.

Ahem.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!