Cowell placing all hopes on Niall Horan’s band

It appears that X Factor big wig Simon Cowell is placing all his hopes of winning this year’s competition on boy band One Direction, featuring Mullingar lad Niall Horan, with Louis Walsh re-confirming this on last Saturday’s show.The boys, made up of Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and the seventeen-year-old Colaiste Mhuire student from Ardleigh, changed their song at the last minute before last weekend’s show, opting instead for an up-tempo rendition of Pink’s Nobody Knows.Simon declared his obvious confidence in the group when he said it was “a pleasure” to work with the boys, and that vocally they had made a “huge improvement” while Louis Walsh said it was clear that Simon was mentoring only one band - One Direction - and was not giving any proper direction to his other act, girl group Belle Amie, after their performance of Girls Aloud’s I’ll Stand By You.Meanwhile Danni Minogue wondered aloud why Pink could be classed a guilty pleasure, and Cheryl Cole declared that One Direction were in fact her guilty pleasure, saying:“You are my guilty pleasure. When you watch the VT and see all the hysteria you cause, that’s what you should do, that’s what boybands should be about”.And if the latest Facebook application “Forget ‘Bieber Fever’, I have ‘One Direction Infection’, is anything to go by, The Westmeath Examiner reckon we’ll see these boys in the final for sure!.Styles gets Westmeath accentMeanwhile, fans have been impressed at One Direction’s Harry Styles’ take-off of Niall’s Mullingar accent which is pretty convincing! Catch it on You Tube by searching for: Final 14 - The X Factor 2010 - Question Time.