The live finals of X Factor are still a week and a half away, but that’s no reason why we can’t offer you some dangerously wild speculative X Factor betting odds about the judges anyway, is it?

Let’s be clear – we’re still none the wiser about who the 12 X Factor finalists are. Although we’ll confess that we hope the crying singing teacher woman from Saturday’s X Factor gets through, because she’s doing it all for her young students, even though ‘it’ involves winning X Factor and becoming a pop star so successful that she’ll have to quit teaching forever, effectively abandoning the students she claimed that she was doing it for in the first place. Yeah, we’re really big fans of her. Anyway, these X Factor betting odds aren’t about her; these X Factor betting odds are about the judges, so shut up.

So here are the X Factor betting odds for Simon Cowell and Dannii Minogue to hook up romantically this year, with help from Paddy Power…

Simon Cowell to start dating Dannii Minogue by New Year’s Day 2008 – Like everyone else, we were stunned when it was announced that Dannii Minogue was going to be the new X Factor judge because, well, what’s the point of Dannii Minogue? Last we heard she was so desperate to sell her Greatest Hits album that she was ‘accidentally’ caught dancing topless with a stripper in a newspaper and now she’s judging a nationwide talent show? There’s only one possible reason why Dannii Minogue is an X Factor judge, and that’s that Simon Cowell has got the hots for her. We read an interview once where Simon admitted having a crush on Dannii, and now all of a sudden she’s an expert on his show despite being almost completely devoid of personality, style or talent. So will Simon Cowell and Dannii Minogue take this flirtation public by New Year’s Day? There’s no reason why they shouldn’t – unless they have sex in public, of course. We have enough intimacy issues as it is. Current X Factor betting odds – 10/1

Tomorrow – will Simon Cowell cry? Will he? But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power X Factor betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.