And Jerrilyn survives--again!

I'll put a caveat here.

Jerrilyn has come to be a very good friend of mine, but given a choice between her and Jodie, friendship would have surely taken a seat way back at the end of the hall.

To say I was shocked at the elimination of Jodie would be a gross understatement. I was STUNNED! I had my mouth open for all of at least five minutes!

Begging your pardon, I get ahead of myself.

What I am talking about, for those who may not know, is the show 'West African Idols'. Last Monday's results show saw Jodie evicted.

Yes. Jodie.

The young girl that everyone admits is probably the best singer in the competition, along with Timi.

Once again, Jerrilyn survived. If our Liberian Girl the first two evictions, it was almost understandable. But then she seemed to lose confidence along the way and bungled her lines about three weeks ago.

On that occasion, even she thought she was going home. Infact, she actually told me she had her bags packed and ready to say goodbye. But, surprise, surprise, Uche was the one voted off.

Her performance picked up the next week, but there were still confidence issues. Again, she thought she was heading home. This time however, it was to be the tall Mercy (there is a story there too, but that will be later).

At last Sunday's show, Dede could barely utter a word and simply called her Houdini for all her escape acts. If he was speechless then, I imagine he would have been dumbstruck to the point of apoplexy after Monday saw Jodie going home.

To be honest though, I am beginning to fear for Jerrilyn.
People were surprised by her outlasting Uche. They would probably have been slightly indifferent about Mercy.

But Jodie??????

This was a girl who regularly brought the roof down each time she sang. Her only less than perfect performance was last Sunday, but she did not deserve to go, not even on the basis of that.

The fans wont like her exit, and the blame will fall on Jerrilyn. I fear that she may even get booed this week. It was borderline last week at Planet One. The applause for her was just polite and the critique from the judges was hailed by the audience. I fear the fangs will be bared this week and our Liberian Girl will suffer boos from the audience at Planet One.

Even worse for her will be the relationship with her fellow contestants. If they feared for their places before, Jodie's exit will now almost certainly frighten the bejeezus out of every single one of them.

Eric's tears would not have been just for Jodie alone.

Will Jerrilyn still find it comfortable living in that Idols house? I doubt it. Cloying would be an understatement. Her housemates are going to make life even more difficult for her. Maybe we will see the first case of an idol voluntarily withdrawing from the competition.

So the question must be, how does Jerrilyn do it?

Of course she doesnt vote for herself. Africa votes. And therein, I think, lies the issue.

My gut feeling that most of the votes come from Nigeria and Liberia. The rest of Africa dont look like they can be bothered as they have no contestants there.

So the only explanation is that the whole of Liberia's votes go to Jerrilyn, while the Nigerian votes are split among the rest.

For instance, I gathered from sources that the week Uche was eliminated, Jerrilyn polled the second highest number of votes!

And that was the week when she performed really poorly.

But Jodie? Nah, I cant take this.