I'LL be honest, by 10pm Saturday night I was thinking this week's X Factor had been a bit dull.

Even Jedward singing "I'm just a link in your daisy chain" while cavorting with a semi-clad dancer didn't make me cringe as much as last week's Britney effort.

But then Westlife came on stage and revealed Simon Cowell's most diabolical scheme yet.

Now, if you've been watching the X Factor you'll know that the song the boys did, What About Now, has been used extensively as the swelling-now's-the-time-to-get-emotional background music during the auditions process this year.

You probably found that you knew all the words without realising that you did.

But let me just draw your attention to a few facts you might not know.

What About Now (or WAN, as it's known to die hard fans)was written by a man called Chris Daughtry, who was an American Idol hopeful a few years back.

Simon wasn't won over by him at first but by week twelve, loved him - and so was more than a little shocked when he was voted out three weeks from the final.

Chris went off and started a band, called simply Daughtry. (which makes me wonder, if Danyl gets booted off and starts his own band, will it be called simply "Johnson"?).

WAN was in the charts on downloads a couple of weeks ago, on the back of the repeated X Factor plays, and Daughtry would love to be big in the UK.

But Westlife are one of SyCo's money making machines and they've been away a long time. And although Daughtry are on one of Simon's record labels, they reportedly (and mysteriously) aren't getting a UK release for WAN.

So having built up the song so that people already know and like it, Simon's gone and given it to Westlife.

Never mind that there's an army of song-writing monkeys locked in a dungeon under Louis Irish mansion who could have come up Westlife's comeback (and let's face it, they're on the X Factor, it could have been a funeral dirge and they'd still be number one).

No, Simon's taken Chris Daughtry's ball and given it to the most popular kids in the class, just because he can.

At least CD has the bonus of knowing he's about to make a truckload of money in songwriting royalties.

Anway: here's the original, and then the Westlife version. Let us know in the comments which you prefer.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's what that Jedward song SHOULD have sounded like.