American Idol Top 7 become 6

I can only guess that this week no-one had time to rehearse the completely pointless and half-hearted attempts at entertainment in the shape of the let's combine the contestants and get them to sing something spot. David Cook and his band did a decent job of promoting his latest single, although that's something we in the UK will probably only find on some American Heartbeat Volume 17 CD at some time in the future. Katy Perry had a go at following in Lady Gaga's style with a ridiculous device that got pushed around by men wearing grey body stockings. The title of her release, E.T. had me wondering for a moment whether she was singing about the misshapen upright tortoise from the great film but apparently some rap guy was the alien that would be telling her what to do. Hope time goes more slowly on his planet, though, as her outfit would have taken some getting out of and the LEDs flashing at the end might have given him a shock too. Still, not a bad track which we will get to see at the top of our charts later this year.

Throughout most of this Jacob had been sitting on his own on the bottom three chairs. We knew he wasn't going home, though, to counter the lack of Jacobs getting through to the last six to date and there'd have been all hell to pay over the technical thing that must have put him off too. Yes, he should go but no, he won't. Next week, hopefully, although I do keep saying that.

You kinda sensed that it was Stefano's time that was up. Haley was there very briefly but Ryan did the decent thing and, in a nice touch, whispered that she was safe before the camera even had a chance to focus on her. That was a relief as I really want to see more of her. And, yes, it was, indeed, time for Stefano, last of the wild cards, to leave.

In an excellent farewell performance he really stole the whole show. Lately is his type of song and he does that well. You could feel that he'd relaxed - the stress was gone and you wished that he'd done that before and the applause and genuine sorrow that the camera picked out on James' and Jennifer's faces were noticeable.

This has been Lauren's week but Scotty's still favourite. Betfair seem to have decided that it's now between Scotty, James and Lauren, with Casey, Jacob and Haley leaving in reverse order over the next three weeks. I hope Haley can hang on. We'll see soon enough.