X-Factor 2010

So, the final 246 contestants are now through boot room and showing their rampant mediocrity via their less than scincillating live performances on Saturday and Sunday nights. This programme is getting out of control and has an opinion of itself way out of odds with the quality of the poor suckers in it, in fact the dripping insincerity, hyperbole and all round smugness is becoming frankly astounding. We now find ourselves, here in the UK, in the rather unhealthy position of having  a huge chunk of the annual, prime time Saturday night slot on ITV, controlled by Simon Cowell and his entourage of whimpering sidekicks. This guy is raking it in, he controls prime time TV on one channel for most of the year via the X-Factor and Britain rather obviously Doesn’t have much Talent and then to top it all off, he gets to showcase his acts and record label artists on prime time TV on the same shows. And nobody seems to care….

Some of the dross on this years final defies belief. Diva Fever? More like Talentless Woofs ahoy, they’re this years Jedward. That berk Katie, who Cowell laughingly describes as “original” when she has plainly plundered the worst aspects of Lady Gaga, Madonna and their ilk came on last night and ‘performed” (in the loosest possible sense of the word) “We are the champions” and it was so poor it actually made me wish, for the first time in my life, that Queen had sung it. That lumbering big oaf Page, with that truly awful jacket, danced around the stage in a manner which suggested that someone had stuck a scorpion up his anus. Luckily we had Wagner, looking like a demented Miguel Angel Jimenez, to restore some sanity with a rather bonkers performance, at least he had the good grace to send himself up when everyone else was poncing about. How does that Cher girl, who is only about 17, manage to make herself like an alcoholic 32 year old? Nonetheless Cowell who, don’t forget, has more than a slight vested interest in building these people up called her iffy performance “genius”….oh please. Storm is truly a talentless git, destined for a support spell at Pontins.

Here’s the typical scenario. Mediocre karaoke style person with little panache or style comes on, covers the sort of record you’d be quite happy never to have heard again and gets rapturous standing ovation as if the audience had just witnessed the Beatles first live TV performance followed by the judges gushing and glowing comments and subsequent hysterical audience reaction. It’s unbelievable, it’s so far up its own arse you’d need a rescue mission on a par with the Chilean miners to drag them all out.

I hate this programme with a vengeance, to me it represents everything that is crap about the UK these days, the way it worships mediocrity. I don’t care if Cowell is using these people, if they are stupid enough to believe the tripe that gets thrown their way from the judges then they deserve it. We’re in a never ending cycle of these “talent’ shows, it’s a relatively cheap way to fill TV time and shows no sign of slowing down.