NEW YORK: With the onset of the new 'American Idol' season last week, there is an animated sense of keen interest among Idol watchers to see if the show throws up another Sanjaya Malakar.

And sure enough, when the show premiered last Tuesday with the Philadelphia auditions, making it in from among the record, stadium-busting crowds of wannabe Idols was Udgeet "Udi" Sampat, a financial analyst.

Udi, as he liked to be called, belted out an unbelievably bad rendition of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" prompting the judges to throw him out, with an advice that he should restrict his "numbers" to the calculator.

Meanwhile, Sanjaya Malakar, the desi who made waves last year, not so much for his singing talent, as for his weird hairdos and effeminate style, has been featured in Mad magazine's list of the "20 Dumbest People, Events & Things of 2007".

Adding to Sanjaya's notoriety, the cult magazine put him at number 20, and said: "Sanjaya: Indian Bummer We're generally jealous of no-talents who make millions of dollars. But not so with the king of no-talents, Simon Cowell.

Cowell reportedly made over $45 million last year as a judge on American Idol. But we think he was underpaid. After all, the poor b@#$%& had to sit through every second of every excruciating, soul-crushing performance of Sanjaya Malakar, the tone-deaf song-smith who suffered perennial bad hair days and, by comparison, made William Hung sound like Josh Groban.

We can only pray that we've heard the last of this Michael Jackson wannabe." However, Sanajaya is hardly paying the price for his notoriety. Last year, he was among the country's elite who were invited for a White House dinner with President George W. Bush, and currently he is working on releasing his solo album and planning a tour!