X-Factor: Meet the finalists

We're at London's ITV Tower with the remaining 20 or so X-Factor contestants. And they're all at that 'nice' stage, enjoying the first blush of Saturday-night TV fame.

Being followed by paparazzi to the shops and photographed buying loo roll is weird, but still cool.

Click here for video interviews with all the finalists

Having your Facebook account raided for drunken pictures which end up on the front-pages is no more annoying than the mouth-buzz you got from having your teeth bleached. ("It's like as if you spent the whole day eating ice cream - ugh, never again," grimaces latino Ruth.)

The Girls: Amy Connolly & Alexandra Burke

The girls are still with their boyfriends from back home, and text them almost every day. You honestly can't imagine any one them ever having a proper, hair-flinging, Mariah-style tantrum or demanding swan-on-toast backstage.

The Boys: Austin, Eoghan and Scott

The boys are cocky and sensitive. Grans'-favourite Eoghan Quigg is 16 going on about 11 and looks more than a bit rabbit-in-headlights. After an hour's grilling by her majesty's (online) Press he dashes to a nearby computer and logs onto Bebo.

Bad Lashes

There's a playful catfight going on between the girlbands (one calls the other 'pop' as if it's the ultimate insult). But back at the house they share for the duration of the show they do each other's hair'n'makeup and call each other 'brilliant'.

JLS

When our camera packs up for a bit and we ask the four lads from JLS to go through a whole bunch of questions and a bit of impromptu barbershop again, they agree with a waved 'no worries'.

The contestants (The Girls, The Boys, The Groups and the Over-25s) all say their respective mentors are, without exception, "inspirational". Even Simon Cowell, who has left his tribe in the charge of (presumably) glamorous assistants while he's off being important and smug somewhere else.

Rachel

Even so, nothing can quite erase suspicions that everyone wanted Cheryl Cole. She's been there, done it and emerged as a down-to-earth national trezzuh with perfect skin and expensive hair.

Five years into its run and the X-Factor bandwagon shows no sign of slowing down or shutting up.

The back-stories and struggles have got hammier. Single dad, check. Teenage bullying hell, check. Ex-crack-addict-mum-of-five- who's-done-time-for-burglary, check.

But the rags-to-riches narrative remains unchanged. The girl-next-door becomes the girl aloud.

This year, the Amy Winehouse effect is in evidence with the girls searching their souls to lace their performance with whatever emotional pain lies therein. Rachel Hylton looks to have more to get her teeth into than the others.

Among the grown-ups, sorry the over-25s, Daniel Evans appears to have to shed a couple of stone but still hasn't quite shaken the cheeky pub-singer sheen. No-one mentions David Brent.

Ruth & Ricky Daniel

Ruth Lorenzo - half-English, half-Spanish, and half-undressed in a T-shirt that's so off-the-shoulder its virtually on-the-floor - tells us she isn't just a great voice, big hair and hot Latino body. Which is true. She's also got really white teeth.

Laura

The bookies have put Bolton lass Laura White as favourite - probably the prettiest up-close, she comes closest to displaying something like star quality away from the spotlight - but there's a boyband-shaped gap in the pop market right now that the wonderfully polite JLS might just squeeze into. With a bit of help from some auto-tune.

Whatever happens, within a few weeks one or (possibly) more among this nervous, excited, happy gaggle will have gone from All Bar One to number one with - if past form is anything to go by - the fastest selling Christmas single ever.

For now, they're loving it, loving each other, living the dream and promising to give it everything in the live finals.

Only JLS' mouthpiece Aston strays close to questioning the price of reality-show celebrity: "We spend all this time talking about ourselves, doing interviews & photos with the newspapers - sometimes we forget we're singers, but that's what we do, man, that's what we do..."

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