X Factor Betting Odds: Ben Mills & Leona Lewis

We're getting dangerously close to the halfway point of X Factor 2006, and everything is going to plan - some rubbish acts have been voted off X Factor, but there's still a whole lot more to plough through before the final.

Not that the acts in the X Factor final are going to surprise anyone; unless all of Scotland rises up to let the MacDonald Brothers and Nikitta Angus take part in what would easily the least believable X Factor final ever, the final is clearly going to be between Leona Lewis and Ben Mills. We'd put money on it. At least we think we would. So far. Probably. Ahem.

Here are the X Factor betting odds for Leona Lewis and Ben Mills…

Ben Mills - Ben can't have ever been looking forward to singing Abba songs on Saturday's X Factor; his daft, over-the-top, hairy-testicled RAWK way for singing everything means that he naturally wants to end every syllable with a sort of elongated "Wooooeeeurrrrrr" noise, and - since Abba's songs all go "di di di di di di di" his X Factor performance of SOS just wasn't up to scratch - instead of wailing everything like a velicoraptor standing on some Lego and straining for a shit, Ben ended up sounding like a velicoraptor standing on some Lego and straining for a shit who was suffering from a bit of asthma. Luckily Ben's performance got better - if you can call someone singing an Abba song in the exact style of Meatloaf 'better' - and he's generally thought to do a lot better this week, on X Factor's Raging Speedhorn theme night. Current X Factor betting odds - 5/4

Leona Lewis - Ahead of last Saturday's X Factor, Leona learnt two important things. Firstly Leona truly learnt to fully understand the sentiments of Chiquitita, thanks to Bjorn From Abba's sterling advice to "read the words"; and secondly Leona learnt the Will Young technique of singing songs - the 'quiet start, loud finish' technique. Obviously Leona being Leona she took it new extremes by actually starting the song while still sitting on the freaking floor, but it paid off well. Leona delivered another knockout performance, even if her habit of oversinging words so that "tomorrow" sounded like "tomorrowowowowowowowowow" is becoming so self-indulgent that eventually we get the feeling that her X Factor performances will just consist of a single drawn-out, horribly mangled word that lasts for three minutes. And this week Leona spiced things up by not bursting into tears as soon as her song finished. Hopefully next week she'll spice things up further by hinting at a speck of personality, but that's probably just wishful thinking. Current X Factor betting odds - 5/4 

Tomorrow: Strictly Come Dancing betting odds! Yippee!