Ask any right-minded person in the street what the best thing they can imagine is, and the majority of them will instantly tell you "I want to be a finalist on X Factor, that is literally the best thing I can imagine."

Of course it is – everyone wants to be on X Factor. Personally, we couldn't think of anything we want more than for Louis Walsh to tell us we're mediocre at singing Whitney Houston songs, and you probably think the same thing. But, surprisingly enough, some people don't want to be on X Factor. We're going to find out who they are and set fire to their houses later because they probably touch kids up too, but only once we've got over the shock of discovering that some people don't think that being a finalist on X Factor is the height of respectable fame. And even weirder are the people that do make it as X Factor finalists and then change their mind. Surely that doesn't happen… does it?

Here are today's X Factor betting odds, for an X Factor finalist to quit of his/her own accord & not return…

An X Factor finalist to quit of his/her own accord & not return - It would be an unusually dumb thing for an X Factor contestant to quit the show by themselves and never return, wouldn't it? Well, unusually dumb unless all the contestant's dead relatives appeared before them in a dream and explained that even if they won X Factor, the best they could hope for would be one big single that they wouldn't make much money from thanks to the stinginess of the X Factor recording contracts, and then a slow fade into obscurity. And that scenario probably wouldn't happen. Anyway, a contestant leaving a talent show of their own accord isn't too uncommon – a girl left How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria just the other week. But that happened because the girl who left was a hoity-toity little madam, and pretty much anyone with even a crumb of common sense would run as fast as they could away from Andrew Lloyd Webber if they had the choice. We know we would. To sum up: X Factor contestants are way too grasping and needy to ever leave anything of their own accord – they'd rather be given a lethal injection than give up their three nanoseconds of semi-fame. Current X Factor betting odds – 8/1

Next week – Simon Cowell to slag off X Factor?

[story by Stuart Heritage]