'X Factor' presenter Dermot O'Leary has used his social networking page to respond to the continuing controversy arising from Sunday's elimination and Cheryl Cole's refusal to vote on the ITV show.
Metro reports that O'Leary wrote on his page: "No 'plot' as quoted.
"We never know which way the judges are going to vote. Ever. The only thing I know is who's in the bottom two when I'm given the card.
"I don't know which judge to go to until I'm called, and the judges, including Simon, don’t know the vote or who we're coming to next. It's that simple."
Two of Cole's acts, Treyc Cohen and Katie Waissel, were placed in the bottom two on Sunday's show.
Cole refused to cast her vote after the sing-off, leaving the other judges to decide who went home.
Viewers had expected that Cole would be the last of the judges to vote, as two of her acts were involved; instead she was asked second.
Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh chose to save Waissel, with Dannii Minogue picking Cohen.
Had Cole voted for Cohen, the results of the public vote would have decided who was eliminated.
TV sources told the Daily Mail that Cohen had received three times as many votes from the public as Waissel.
The Sun earlier quoted O'Leary as saying: "We talked about it [the elimination] in the [ad] break because you find out two or three minutes before what's going to happen.
"My producer said: 'Look, if Cheryl decides to opt out we go to majority vote'.
"She did decide to opt out - and then she said: 'Come back to me and we'll do deadlock'."
The Sun says that O'Leary defended the decision not to use the public vote to settle the elimination by saying: "You can't do that because then it kind of devalues the other two judges' votes so that wouldn't have made sense."
He added: "It would have been a lot easier for me for Cheryl to be last [in voting]. There's no precedent to it so it's tricky."
A spokesperson for the show said: "Cheryl was well within her rights to do what she did. There are no official rules on 'X Factor'."
