The baby of a friend of mine is in the Earl's Court baby modelling competition.

He's a beautiful little boy and has had a steady number of votes from his proud parents, family and friends, but he's quite a way down the leaderboard. His mum and dad don't mind that, they are happy to keep voting for him and he'll finish where he finishes. It's not an exact science, it's a numbers game in so many ways, and they got a nice memento from the show in the shape of the mocked up magazine front cover.

What has caught my imagination is the voting. It's seriously entertaining and is arguably better than the voting on the Eurovision Song Contest. It appears some people are taking things a little more seriously than others, which makes for a fascinating contest. Has anyone else been keeping tabs on the voting?

If not, to put you in the picture, there appear to be six or seven entrants feverishly chasing three spots in the final. The rest - although beautiful children - appear to be well out of contention. Now, there have been murmurings of discontent and the word 'cheating' has reared its ugly head more than once, but the battle is a fascinating one nonetheless. Those accused of cheating (registered users' words not mine) have regularly weighed in with big numbers of votes in a relatively short period of time and have usually ended up in, or back in, the top three - until some of their rivals do exactly the same thing. It appears that they all have masses of friends and family in all corners of the world who appear to register their votes at pretty much the same time, thus generating a big vote swell.

The upshot is that the top six or seven places are interchangeable all the time, ie someone who was top overnight may find themselves in fifth place next morning and vice-versa. It's brilliant viewing and I crank up the computer in the morning with great anticipation to see who's top at that particular point - knowing fine well that by the time I get back from work that evening the lead will have changed hands.

Here's the fun bit. Despite a high numbers of friends voting across the planet on a regular basis, the new leader (be it morning, noon or night) always appears to have a slender lead when the votes stop piling in. The cynic in me says that surely with that kind of support, the gap at the top would suddenly become huge as not every rival can count on their huge fan base doing the business every day. Some people's fans must sometimes be busy, be out, or sometimes even just forget, meaning one entrant could steal a march and open a big lead. Somehow that hasn't happened. Can't imagine why?

Anyone whose interest may be piqued should check out the leaders in the London ExCeL competition and read the comments of the top few. The debates rage and it's compelling stuff. Earl's Court hasn't reached those heights yet and, with a much shorter voting period, probably won't, but you never know.

One final thing before I go to see if Sky or the BBC are covering this (they really should, it's great entertainment), has anyone else realised that the real winners in this are this very website? Imagine the number of web hits generated by this competition which makes it a seriously attractive proposition to potential advertisers. Top work, babyexpert.com.

Completely agree! My beautiful little girl Isabel is in the comp and due to a complete fiasco with the voting, none of us could vote for her in the first week and there's no way she can win now. Makes me smile when I read the comments people have written cos you can't help but agree, and if these people had faith in their own beautiful children they wouldn't need to bump up the votes, or as they say, 'get a large network of friends and family to vote together'. I have lots of friends and family who were all waiting to vote last week, they all registered but the voting button just didn't appear on Izzy's page. So yes, I have to agree with you, the only winners are the website!

I agree, I don't know how but i think somehow people are able to fix the voting. This will sound horiible but some of the chidlren in the top 3 are not anywhere near as beautiful as others yet are getting hundreds of votes!

It's easily done, Louise, as the website folk gave the game away with the initial voting problems - and it's clearly been milked royally by a few people. Basically, if you clear your cache and browsing history after each vote, a flaw will let you vote over and over again - if you've nothing better to do, that is!

What website is this? Just wondering what it was?
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It's this website, Roxi. Go up to the Gallery tab at the top of this page then go to the Earl's Court competitionpage. The real row erupted during the London Excel show, but this one's shaping up.

It's not even a new problem. Last years competition was exactly the same, a few people getting frankly ridiculous amounts of vote. You'd think that Prima would have learnt that they need a new way of doing it by now!
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