IdolsShame, this year’s Idols really has been rocked by a couple of scandals this time round. It isn’t enough just to have to deal with fake …contestants’, now MNET has to deal with the fact that there was a problem with the phone-in numbers displayed during Sunday evening’s broadcast.

DSTV’s interactive screen seems to have published four faulty phone numbers to viewers, those of Jody, Munro, Carla and Bjorn. Normally all of the contestants’ numbers start with 086 22 777 followed by an individual number to identify each of them. For example, Andriette’s number would be 086 22 777 06 and Jody’s number 086 22 777 11.

Unfortunately on Sunday night, the technicians who pushed through the number mask for the interactive screen made a slight error, resulting in an erroneous …0′ appearing before the numbers of all the contestants whose numbers are greater than 9, namely Jody (11), Munro (12), Carla (13) and Bjorn (14). So if you followed the onscreen number to submit your vote for Munro 086 22 777 013 you would have actually ended up voting for Yolanda without even knowing it, thanks to the fact that her number ends with 01 (086 22 777 01).

The error appears only to have occurred during Sunday night’s broadcast, but this does raise a thorny question over what MNET would have done should one of these affected contestants have been voted out?

(As it is, they were saved by the fact that despite the extra votes coming her way, Yolanda still managed to get voted out thanks to her atrocious performance on Sunday)

More importantly, my question on the issue remains: Does anyone in South Africa really care about this show anyhow?

I have the pleasure of watching it because Chantelle likes it, but I wonder just how many South Africans are in fact tuning into it every week?