I was really annoyed today to read that apparently, Rikki Loney was dropped from The X Factor in favour of Liam Payne. It’s not that that I object to, it’s that Simon Cowell foisted the decision on the other judges and effectively pulled rank.

It seems that the other judges disagreed that Rikki should be pulled out of the contest to make room for Liam, but Simon simply overruled them. Doesn’t that just make a mockery of the whole purpose of having three other judges?

Now, I love Simon; he’s gorgeous, witty, acerbic and incredibly successful so I don’t doubt that if he says someone has talent, they have it, but according to reports in the Daily Star today about the debacle, he completely ran roughshod over the others judges who wanted Rikki to stay in the competition.

Here are a few extracts from the article…

“SIMON Cowell has angered his fellow judges by dumping hopeful Rikki Loney to bring back a ‘reject’. His decision to axe the 21-year-old Scot led to a fiery showdown with Cheryl Cole, 25, and Dannii Minogue, 36… Fans saw Liam get a second chance on Sunday but the footage of Rikki being dumped was not shown, leaving viewers wondering which of the lads had lost their place…”

And, “He (Ricky) said: ‘What annoys me is that none of this got shown. They really bigged me up on Saturday’s boot camp show, giving viewers the impression I’d do really well. But on Sunday I barely featured.

“People have been saying: ‘If Liam was brought back, then who got axed?’ Now everyone will know it was me.”

A show spokeswoman said: “The judges’ decisions are final. Not everything that happened at boot camp could be shown within the time constraints we had for the programme.”

We saw on Sunday the moment when Louis, Cheryl and Dannii squared up to Simon and said that Simon’s decision was 1 against 3 and they felt he was making a bad and unfair ruling. We then saw Simon assuring them that they wouldn’t be sorry and it was the right decision to make. I’m assuming this was the Rikki/Liam debate.

I really think that’s out of order. Are the other three judges just there for show then or what? Is it the case that when something doesn’t go as Simon wants it to he can just pull rank and change the format to suit himself?

I really don’t begrudge Liam a place – that’s not the point – and I feel sorry for Rikki but it makes the other judges look stupid to be honest. They are basically props in the show if their joint decisions can be overridden at will by Simon.

Is this a case of ‘it’s my show and I’ll make all the really important decisions’ from Simon or was he justified in doing as he pleases because he effectively owns the X Factor concept?

What do you think?