The final curtain

There's good news and there's bad news: Simon Cowell has pledged to make no more 'musical casting' shows after Grease Is The Word (has that finished yet?)

The bad news, though, that he's stopping doing them because they're too similar to his cash cow X Factor. And, although insert name of country here's Got Talent would seem to also be the X Factor, just with a couple of jugglers, he's still pushing that one for all its worth.

Any stat will do

The team behind Grease Is The Word are trying to take comfort anywhere they can find it, in their battle with Any Dream Can Do:

"We might be behind in the ratings but our sales are best."

In other words: they're selling more tickets for the show their winners will appear in - five million pounds worth.

Well done, ITV. Of course, Grease is playing in a venue with a capacity of 1232 against Joseph's 1050. And it's booking through to the end of February, while sales for Joseph are only being made through to the 5th of January. And the ticket prices for Grease are spread between £20 and £55, while the Jospeh prices run between £15 and £49.50. So, in other words, Grease has managed to make more money by, erm, selling more seats, for more nights, at higher prices. Well done, everybody.

Even Cowell hates Grease Is The Word

Okay, it's probably slightly hypocritical of us to suddenly start hailing the quality of Simon Cowell's critical judgement, but when he has a pop at Grease Is The Word, you do find yourself nodding:

"It has been slaughtered by the critics and rightly so."

Of course, the difference between us and him is that we're not actually making the programme through our indie company.

Sinitta (Clothes judge's own)

Sinitta shouldn't be too upset that Simon Cowell turned down her requests for a clothing allowance to be a judge on the Grease programme on ITV. It's not like anyone's watching it, is it?

Mind you, it's a bit rich of Cowell to insist that the judges wear their own clothes. After all, the programme has been pinched from BBC America, so if ITV is happily wrapping its Saturday nights in someone else's designs, why shouldn't the judges?