well any threat to a dull start was quickly seen off…  right people, here's how it went down.  Gray's Inn Road will be celebrating a ratings win…  12.8 million of us watched Saturday's show giving it a 44% share, compared to the 32% share of 8 million that strictly mustered.  but this was, crucially, followed by an amazing ratings performance on Sunday when on average 13 million of us watched the results show.  viewing peaked during Robbie's rather stimulated performance at 14.5 million.  thanks Tom J for the figs on this.

there was less wow-Factor to the results, I called Kandy but was surprised to see Rachel in the bottom two.  but then by the time it got to vote we'd had two hours of crazy crazy TV in which to forget her.  fairly easy first tipps therefore see most of the tipping pack sitting on 20 points, with one early Tipping hero taking an early lead on 25.  here are the full scores…

big shout out to Mat who predicted Kandy Rain and Rachel as the bottom two and bags 25 points.  the main field are following hotly behind him on 20 points – where Mediation is joined by Alex L, Alex V, April, Chris, Dale, Dave, Gordon, Jason K, Jason W, Kevin, Lawrence, Lucy, Neil, Nicole, Nuala, Paul, Ruth, both the Simons, Stu and Tom.  on 10 points are Alison, Ashley, Bimla, Camara, Keely, Mauro, Nick, Paul and Saskia.  finally with a disappointing first week is Carole, who is yet to score.

which brings up to this:

my Twitter feed really tells the whole story (ignore the Grazia style bit – thats a head's up for Friday's post), Danyl started really strong and gave an amazing performance but then Danni's foot in mouth happened.  cue the Guardian live blog going mental, about five IMs coming in and the Twittersphere spontaneously combusting.  OK perhaps it felt bigger at the time but Petit Chablis had been involved.

point is, I went to bed thinking bad Dannii and then watched the end of the show again on Sunday morning when less Petit Chablis was in hand.  Danni was, in retrospect, clearly trying to support Danyl by saying that he shouldn't feel compelled to change the 'gender references' when he sings.  that its OK for a boy to sing a song about a boy.  and on this she's right.  but on doing it on national television with a comment that went above the heads of most of the studio audience is something else entirely…  misjudged, yes; maliscious, no.

but a few nicely handled words for the judging bench last night and its all well that ends well, allowing us to move on to more fun-filled Factor frolics next week…  there's some good banter in The Blue Room on this but I'll leave the final word on Dannii and Daryl to Alexis Petridis' elegant testimony in today's Guardian to Stephen Gately who died at the weekend…

"On the night Gately died, X Factor judge Dannii Minogue tried a clumsy joke about contestant Danyl Johnson's sexuality. The studio audience received it in stony silence: not shocked so much as "so what?" It would be ridiculous to call that reaction the legacy of Gately coming out, but it is not entirely unlinked. He was the first person to prove mainstream pop audiences were less bigoted than some had feared."