Gracious in defeat

Bad news for anyone with ears or eyes, as Rhydian announces in characteristically low-key fashion that he's going to be releasing a second album. That's right, the secret ginger from the valleys managed to outsell X-Factor winner Leon Jackson with an album full of bellowing pOpera classics that people bereft of inspiration bought for unloved relatives at Christmas.

Unlike Leon and creepy incest act Same Difference (who at least managed a half-decent pop album), Rhydian has deftly dodged the dumper and lived to bleach another day. But with a little distance between himself and the show that discovered him, the pock-marked mask of humility is beginning to slip.

If you cast your minds back, you may remember the early stages of the X-Factor when Rhydian was the comic relief, with his hopelessly unironic arrogance.

But unhappy with his portrayal (sorry Rhydian, the camera might magnify, but it doesn't lie) he complained about the editing, so the producers wiped the slate clean and recast him as the showman, at a level of camp that Liberace would have asked to tone down. Rhydian wasn't happy about that either, and appeared very uncomfortable when taking to a stage awash with seamen (stop it!) to perform Go West. In the end, the weeping Scottish twiglet won, but it was Rhydian that shifted the units.

Now he's gearing up to go back in the studio, but is mindful not to revel in his friends' change of fortune. "I feel for those who have gone off the radar, I think Leon has gone back to Scotland and Same Difference might be at Butlins… I wouldn't know what to say now. I couldn't tell them about all the stuff I've been doing like shows in Japan and Rome and my UK tour. That would be embarrassing." Quite.