It looks like Khloe Kardashian owes mom Kris Jenner her new gig. According to reports, Jenner single-handedly sealed the deal to make Khloe the new co-host on “X Factor” right when negotiations were on the verge of imploding.

TMZ is reporting that negotiations had come to a grinding halt because E! and FOX couldn’t seem to work out a deal that would allow Khloe to appear on both networks. We’re told “X Factor” was getting ready to pull the plug on talks with Khloe … when Kris Jenner got word of the hold up and decided to take the bull by the horns.

Sources say Kris “stepped in over the agents … over everyone” and forced both networks to sit down with her and hash out a deal … which they eventually did. As one source puts it, “She just knows how to make sh*t happen.”

WHAT?

Standout singer Rachel Crow was voted off X Factor on Thursday. The distressed 13-year-old fell to the ground and burst into tears upon hearing the news.

Crow’s position in the competition was put in jeopardy when judge Nicole Scherzinger, 33, threw the vote to a tie, forcing viewers to choose between the young singer and Marcus Canty, who was in the bottom two for the third week in a row.

In a surprising twist, viewers decided to give Canty another shot, sending Crow home after just seven weeks in the competition.

Judge Simon Cowell, 52, later defended Scherzinger’s actions, telling Us Weekly: “I think ironically what she was trying to do was let Marcus go with some dignity because she was attached to both of them. But there’s no question about it, if she thought Rachel would have been out she would have gone the other way.”

Post-show, Crow admitted she wasn’t “feeling the greatest” but she’ll “be fine.”

Crow doesn’t hold a grudge against Scherzinger, either. “She’s the nicest, sweetest, most beautiful person, inside and out. She was crying and she was so sad,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just what God had in store for me and it’ll be okay.”

Nicole Scherzinger is deaf or just plain stupid.

If American Idol is worried about ratings, they should follow the example of Britain’s ‘X Factor’, which apparently is combining the talent show with the white-trash excitement of the Jerry Springer show.

A few days ago, horrified Viewers saw aspiring singers Abbey Johnston and Lisa Parker, aka Ablisa, storm off to a chorus of boos before they even get as far as singing.

But after a poor performance of Shayne Ward’s That’s My Goal and managing to insult some of the judging panel, things turned sour when Abbey hit her friend across the face.

Abbey claimed she was angry with Lisa after her rude response to some gentle criticism from guest judge Natalie Imbruglia by demanding: ‘Who are you, may I ask?’

Simon Cowell takes the pair to task, telling them they have ‘the worst attitude’ of any contestants ever and things go from bad to worse as Abbey lashes out at Lisa before leaving the stage.

Abbey said she hit her friend after Lisa falsely claimed she had the hots for judge Louis Walsh.

Lisa told Louis: ‘Abbey thinks she’s fit… even though you’re old.’

Abbey admitted she was angry after Lisa spoke rudely to Natalie, saying: ‘It’s the last time I ever do anything for her again.’

After watching it I have to say I would have smacked that girl until she was bloody on the floor, she got off way to easily.

In beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry to the Christmas number one, anarchic rockers Rage Against the Machine have pulled off one of the biggest shocks in UK chart history.

The campaign to break Simon Cowell’s stranglehold on the festive charts was started by Jon Morter, a 35-year-old part-time rock DJ and his wife Tracy, 30, who set up a Facebook page in November.

“Fed up with Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas number one? Me too…” they wrote, saying they wanted to break the “X Factor monotony”.

Their rallying cry struck a chord and the campaign took off at the start of December, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans as the story snowballed.

The Morters had some experience of running such campaigns after starting a similar protest last year to get Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up to number one.

That failed to take off, but a separate crusade saw 2008 X Factor winner Alexandra Burke’s cover of Hallelujah challenged by Jeff Buckley’s version of the same song. In the end, Buckley went to number two but was a distant second.

But this year, the boredom with X Factor had grown and Rage’s rebellious, expletive-filled anti-establishment message was carried aloft by those who wanted to give the show and its formulaic approach to pop a kicking.

Still, nobody expected Rage to beat the invincible Simon Cowell. Some bookmakers were offering odds of 150/1 at one stage, and the betting industry is estimated to have lost £1m.

The initial download sales figures showed Rage ahead but Joe was expected to overtake when his track was released on CD and fans picked it up with their Christmas shopping.

But that never happened and the snow and ice has been blamed in some quarters for keeping the X Factor army at home.

No-one seems to know quite when or why the Christmas number one became such a prized crown, and the battle so hard-fought.

But this very British chart phenomenon may have something to do with the peculiar national taste for festive or ridiculous pop songs and the historical obsession with the charts.

Plus, there is the cachet afforded by being number one on the widely-viewed Christmas Day edition of Top of the Pops, in front of which the whole family would traditionally gather after the Queen’s Speech.

This year’s campaign has made the festive number one battle interesting for the first time in years, and it will be fascinating to see how Simon Cowell responds next year.

Whitney Houston, making her first appearance on UK TV in a dozen years, suffered an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction while performing on Saturday’s episode of British series The X Factor, losing a strap on the back of her silver dress. “I sang myself out of my clothes,” Houston, who was singing the song Million Dollar Bill at the time of the incident, joked with the show’s host, Dermot O’Leary.

A surprised Whitney notices her dress has been broken at 2:35 in the video. Houston’s new album, I Look To You, is in stores now.

Simon Cowell is on his way to becoming the highest-paid star on TV. The American Idol star has signed a deal worth more than $100 million a year to bring X Factor — his A.I.-esque British series — to American TV, London’s The Daily Mirror newspaper reported Sunday.

Recently departed Idol judge Paula Abdul is in the running for on the show. Cowell will produce, but not appear on, the American version of the show. The deal will also extend Cowell’s contract with Idol — which had been due to expire — for another two years.