Today is our lucky day! Normally we only hear from X Factor’s first winner Steve Brookstein once a year (around the time of the X Factor launch coincidentally) but he has saw fit to crawl out from under his rock this week to defend poor old Leon Jackson.

Leon was unceremoniously dumped by his record label this week and they didn’t even do him the favour of phoning to tell him. No, sad old Leon had to read the news in The Sun. Of course Steve Brookstein went through a similar ordeal back in 2005 so he decided to write in support of Leon on his own personal blog.

Brookstein blustered: “If they cared anything about Leon they would have announced his departure after his tour and not before it, they would have kept his fans informed, his website up-to-date, and not put comments from Simon into the press saying: ‘[He's a] nice guy but not gonna set the world on fire, Rhydian should have won’.”

He added: “It reminds me of his ‘G4 were the real winners!’ I’m surprised he allows the public to vote when they’ve only got it right once in four years. When they spent their money deciding Leona Lewis had more ‘X’ than the ice skater Ray Quinn. Phew, tough choice.”

Now it’s not that I disagree with Steve per se, but everything he says these days just comes across as sour grapes and he always did have a mammoth chip on his shoulder. I therefore find it hard to take him seriously and if he really cared about his music and not about securing column inches, he would get on with singing instead of bitching. It really is getting tiresome now!

Former X Factor contestant Rowetta Satchell has admitted that most of the time she was on our screens she was out of her mind drunk.

Rowetta starred in the first series of the ITV show back in 2004 and admitted that the stress of placing herself in such a pressurised environment ended up with her drinking at least a bottle of whiskey a day.

Rowetta, 42, told The Sun: “I didn’t know what X Factor was going to be. It was the first series and the first show where there was no age limit so I went for it. I was so nervous waiting for my audition, I drank for four hours, so I was a mess. I don’t remember anything — all I know is that I really made a fool of myself.”

“After that, people expected me to be this larger-than-life character — but I’m not when I’m sober.

“Louis Walsh went to the papers to say that I constantly had a bottle of whisky in my handbag. I did, because they only served beer and wine at the studios and I don’t like those drinks.

“I’d drink a lot more than everyone else on a Saturday night.
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Simon Cowell said to me on stage once, ‘You’re starting to live a rock and roll lifestyle’. I said, ‘I can handle it’. I thought I could.”

But after she left the show things started to unravel for Rowetta, in fact the night she left she went out partying with Kelly Osbourne and turned up for her press conference the next day in the same clothes with her face covered in blood.

Rowetta has admirably been sober since October 2008 since joining new Living reality TV show, Rehab.

She told the newspaper: “I knew I needed to stop when I started getting blackouts. The last year and a half has been really bad for ending up in bed with young boys.”

“Friends say I now look better, and I definitely like myself better. I can see my future sober, which I’ve never done before. I’m looking forward to going on stage sober, with my head held high.”

REHAB continues on Living TV tonight at 9pm.