Australian Idol Round-Up: Sophie Not Pop!Ular With Darren Hayes

Idol contestant Sophie Paterson, aka the Final 12 member hand-picked from the show’s first expat auditions in London (the LA audition rounds were canned) with the help of celebrity judges Darren Hayes and Tina Arena, is slowly breaking the fragile heart of Hayes into a million tiny pieces. The ex-Savage Garden singer reckons Paterson is too easily letting herself be sucked into the Idol machine. Gee, you think?

“I can understand there’s a pressure to conform – you’re surrounded by a lovely wardrobe and stylists … you’ve got all these resources at your hands, you can be very slick, but I don’t think that’s what she is.”

“When friends at home said she was in the bottom three I was a bit offended, I took it personally.”

Paterson was working in a bar when a producer came in to hand out flyers for the first-time London audition.

“The person that we saw was sort of frail, introverted, tiny little Joni Mitchell, who came in with her acoustic guitar and she was very unassuming,” Hayes said.

“If she gets voted off for the girl that she was in the pub in London I just think she’ll feel better about herself.”

Yes, Dazza, but we know what happens to Idols who are determined to stay true to themselves, and there are two words to describe them: “Chanel” and “Cole”. Meanwhile, Hayes will be mentoring the Final 10 for this Sunday’s show, so hopefully Luke Dickens will be persuaded to sing Savage Garden’s I Want You. We can dream.