So now we know. Now we know which of the army of tear-stained goonish hopefuls have made it through to the X Factor live finals, where they’ll sing some Whitney Houston songs and generally play second-fiddle to Sharon Osbourne’s screeching hysteria.

Saturday’s X Factor told us everything we wanted to know; the remaining 24 contestants were shipped off to the homes of each X Factor judge – Simon Cowell’s gigantic Miami estate! Louis Walsh’s huge Irish castle! Er, some hotel in London that Sharon Osbourne is staying in! – where half of them made it through to the live X Factor finals and half of them were seemingly told to cry as hard as they can for the entire duration of whatever power ballad was playing in the background.

This week, ahead of the live X Factor finals, we’ll be seeing which singers will do best for their judges, and we’re starting that off today with the X Factor betting odds for the 25 and over age-group, with help from PaddyPower.com…

Dionne Mitchell – Every series of X Factor needs an excitable older black lady contestant who looks a bit like the Chiwetel Ejiofor character from Kinky Boots, and the contestant who fills that role this year is Dionne. Dionne is a woman who seems almost compulsively incapable of seeing herself as anything other than the world’s biggest scumbag. Dionne’s big X Factor moment so far was when she became so overwhelmed at having to sing a song at Sharon Osbourne that she ballsed it up in such spectacular fashion that even Sharon Osbourne’s beardy tit friend looked momentarily appalled. In reality, we get the feeling that Dionne only got through to the X Factor live shows because she’s such an emotional wreck that Sharon Osbourne got to stretch out her “I’m really sorry… but… I only need four finalists… and I’m sorry to have to tell you… that… you’re… not… going home just yet” nonsense to brand new tether-snapping lengths. Current X Factor betting odds – 7/1

Robert Allen – OK, we’ve seen all the X Factor episodes this year. We’ve seen all the hilarious ‘laugh at the mentally challenged’ opening issues. We’ve seen the dull bootcamp episodes. We’ve seen the ‘go to the X Factor judge’s home and sing’ episodes. And, despite all this, we still have absolutely no idea who this Robert Allen man is. All we know about Robert Allen – apart from the fact that he has a slightly better chance of winning X Factor than shrieking Dionne – is that he has a girlfriend who’ll have his baby in December. From this we can gather that Robert Allen will sing a monumentally manipulative song about babies if he’s still in X Factor when his baby is born. But we don’t expect that to happen since, as we’ve previously pointed out, Robert Allen couldn’t be more anonymous if he was made out of steam. Current X Factor betting odds – 4/1

Kerry McGregor – You know who Kerry McGregor is; she’s the Scottish one. You know, the one with the rich, soulful voice. Come on, she’s got blonde hair. Oh yeah, and she’s been in a wheelchair since she fell out of a tree and broke her back as a teenager. The whole idea of a wheelchair-bound X Factor finalist raises all kinds of moral questions, like ‘Is the UK ready for a disabled popstar?’ and ‘How long before Sharon Osbourne makes Kerry purposefully sing a song that explicitly refers to her disability to get the telephone votes rolling in?’ Not that any of it matters, though, because Kerry McGregor is obviously going to win X Factor. Why? Because the Bible clearly states that anyone who votes a wheelchair-bound singer off a TV talent show will go to hell faster than Michelle McManus falling out of a first-floor window. Current X Factor betting odds – 6/4

Ben Mills - If ever there was a British Taylor Hicks, it’s Ben Mills. Ben shares many of Taylor’s qualities – a steadfast determination not to be pigeonholed into fulfilling the obvious prerequisites for appearing on a TV popstar show, a likeably eccentric outlook on life and – most importantly – a basic inability to simply sing a song when he could just scream it as loudly as possible like someone was firing staple guns into his thighs instead. To some, Ben has a voice like an age-old soul singer; to us, Ben is a man with a slightly ratty face, an obvious fear of barbers and a voice like Marmite. That doesn’t mean you’ll either love it or hate it, but that it comes in packaging that has recently become squeezable. OK, so it means you’ll either love it or hate it. And PaddyPower seems to be erring on the ‘love’ side. Current X Factor betting odds – 5/4

Tomorrow – the same thing, but for the X Factor groups! Woo! Don’t forget to check out Paddypower.com for the full list of X Factor betting odds, either!

[story by Stuart Heritage]