When freelance clown Nurul Maideen, 19, a.k.a. Noodle, got kicked out of the competition last night, she said to fellow contestant Joakim Gomez, “Because you are taking my spot, you better have a good show next week. You better kick butt!” Hmmmm…

Yes, you heard us right. But don’t get quite so excited yet. Nurul only uttered this words to Joakim after the results show last night by way of egging him on. After all, they were the last two to be left standing on stage as the ‘not so safe’ ones.

“When I was standing next to Joakim, I had a gut feeling that it was gonna be him who would be safe,” Nurul cackles off cherrily. “I know for a fact that Joakim is very, very popular. He draws people.”

Of late, Joakim has been dogged lately by a Gomez saga of another sort, with SI spectators acid-mouthing him on being still in the competition, despite having a voice much weaker than the rest.

But never mind his less-than-enviable voice. Nurul professes to admire Joakim for having his courage to take some rather hostile criticism in his stride. “He’s man enough to handle everything right now.”

Pretty much like Nurul too, we’re sure. When we observe that some folks don’t seem to take too kindly to her bubbly, ‘happy goober’ image (one guy on the official forum boards said of her blog, which is peppered with lots of cute rambling inner thoughts, “It is toooo cutesy and my hair stood on ends.”), Nurul quickly remarks, “I am a clown, so I feel it is a duty to share it with people. Maybe people who don’t like it don’t really fancy the cutesy thing… I try to balance that out by being more composed.”

It worked too well, perhaps. That same composure has led the judges to remark on her bland fuddy image which has (presumably) kept her from audiences at arm’s length. But Nurul defends herself: “That’s my protective shield. I go into autopilot mode. I become very composed and chilled out… it helps me deliver better.”

That she had to perform two Asian pop songs for Wednesday — Coco Lee’s Do You Want My Love and Sheila Majid’s Dia — didn’t help, though: “I was very paranoid by the genre. I speak Malay, but I don’t speak Malay. I’m not fluent in it at all, so I was very paranoid. I had to memorise my lyrics — a challenge for me.”

As the seventh contestant to leave the competition following powerful-lunged singer Mathilda D’Silva in the previous week, Nurul has no regrets. “I feel honoured to have left right after Mathilda. We were in this together. I felt like it was okay to go.”

“I won’t sit down and go, ‘I wish I was more pop, my fans voted more… no!’ This is as far as I deserve to go. I have no regrets at all.”

She has reason for feeling this way: a technical glitch during the piano shows in June this year led Mathilda to think she had made it to the Top 12, when it was later revealed that Nurul had really taken up the Top 12 spot. Mathilda later made it into the competition via the wildcard show.

When it came to delivering her all on Wednesday, Nurul figures she did it just fine, even if she thought she looked a bit tired in the video playback at the hostel that night.

“When I reviewed my performance, I was like, why do I look so tired? Then I thought, maybe I was tired. I didn’t know it looked that bad. But at least I sang my heart out. That was good enough for me!”

The judges had other thoughts. Dick Lee, for one, told her to show some attitude and ‘lose the jeans’. What, was Dick really asking this adorable 19-year-old to up that sex appeal? Like his name, Nurul thinks he wasn’t being so literal: “I’m not too keen on showing too much skin... what he meant by attitude was more internal, and more of having that fire in your eye.”

After the devastating results were unveiled, Nurul headed to Hangout @ Mt Emily to pack up her things. Besides leaving them loads of honey, chrysanthemum tea, vitamins and snacks like cup noodles, she also got them a little something to remember her by: colourful toe socks. “I left Paul soap!” she adds.

Listening to Nurul speak, you get the impression that she’s still pretty much the same old ‘pre-Singapore Idol’ Nurul Maideen who went for the initial auditions in February, not knowing what quite to expect and full of hopes, pretty much like the Nurul Maideen who made it to the Top 6 eventually. For one, she doesn’t ooh and aah about how she’s become a better woman in the past few months.

“At the beginning, I thought fame would change me and the competition would make me more cocky, so I was very paranoid, but to my relief, it hasn’t changed me one bit. I’m still lame, my parents’ daughter, a good friend…it’s just that now I realise how much I love singing.”

Don’t say goodbye to Nurul too soon. That she is no longer fighting together with the rest for the best honour doesn’t bother her in the least, what with the Top 12 contestants banding together on Monday for a good cause: rehearsals for the President’s Star Charity 2006 show. “It’s more a case of ‘I’ll see you soon’, not a case of ‘I’m going’!”

What’s on the cards for this babe: go back to her previous freelance work as a clown and deejay, land some gigs with her soul-mate and fellow ousted Idol contestant Gayle Nerva and further her studies at a university (she has not decided on which one yet) to study theatre or psychology

“It’ll be fun to work with kids again. With my mask on, you don’t know who I am… and I’m actually Nurul Maideen! That’d be quite fun!”