X Factor: Flash vote leaves Shelley Smith facing first elimination
Published:Saturday night saw an eight-minute ‘flash vote’ add a new twist to X Factor’s live shows, and the result of it ensures that Shelley Smith’s time in the spotlight could be unravelling.
On an 80s-themed Saturday night show, the van driver’s performance of Heart’s Alone was panned by judge Gary Barlow, who said that whilst Smith’s competitors were performing modern twists on classics from the decade of big hair and shoulder pads, her rendition was “stuck in the 80s.”
As a result of that criticism the 34-year-old, who is one of Sharon Osbourne’s Over 25s, is now the 4/6 favourite to suffer the first elimination from this first weekend of live shows in this series.
Smith’s outright odds of winning the competition have also shot out to 150/1, a long way behind favourites Tamera Foster, Nicholas McDonald and group Rough Copy, who can be found at 3/1, 4/1 and 9/2 respectively.
After drawing in the lowest number of votes during the flash vote, Smith – who made it to Bootcamp in both 2008 and last year – has now been placed in a sing-off to be performed on Sunday night’s show.
She will compete against an act to be revealed on the evening, with the loser of the sing-off then bowing out of the competition.
Smith’s Saturday night wasn’t all bad though, and she’ll be clinging to a crumb of comfort provided by the encouraging comments of Barlow’s fellow judge Nicole Scherzinger.
The former Pussycat Doll said: “Mrs O [Osbourne] has made a miracle. You stripped it all back and stood there strong and still in your own power.”
Those kind, if a little puzzling words are unlikely to save the single mum from Devon though, with her exit set to push out the odds of an Over 25 winning the competition even further from their current 5/1.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publication
