mesmetron.
I confess I lost a big X Factor bet at the bookies this time round. I’d got 4 to 1 on me taking my own life before the end of the series. Every week we’ve heard who was the bookies’ favourite. Is that much of a guide? Can the best judge of the nation’s mainstream musical tastes really be someone whose perfect sound is a chorus of divorced men coughing and sobbing as they try to light tear-stained roll-ups?
In 2012 The X Factor lost two million viewers. Perhaps it’s simply becoming harder to operate a remote control when you’ve got cloven hooves and a twitch. I think ‘viewers’ is the wrong word. It’s too active. Still, I suppose there’s just not the space to write ‘This Saturday two million fewer people had the deluded shuffling of sterile karaoke puppets reflected in the glaze that coats their lifeless eyes.’ I’ve started to wonder whether ratings are down because people have absorbed all the crap they can take. Maybe it’s literally brimming up to their eyeballs and when they next chop an onion their face will shit itself. Are there too many ad breaks on it now? I’m glad of them. At least it’s a relative break from the relentless commercialism.
But these declining viewing figures are a concern. Experts estimate if they don’t stop falling, by 2032 the show will be forced to travel door-to-door, contestants trying to win viewers over by singing through their letterboxes. It will constitute a sorry procession, forced to trundle its way from town to town in cages set upon little wooden carts, Simon’s brain atop in a nutrient-filled jar, the whole affair pulled along by a team of blinded stray dogs, relentlessly driven forward by a cackling hooded driver dangling an Asda Smart Price sausage from a fishing rod.
I’m enjoying the X Factor iPhone app where you can hit a button to clap or boo the acts. To get a rat in a lab to do that they’d have to give it some kind of reward – perhaps by making the singing stop. A lot of the show seems to involve cutting back to the judges’ faces as they run through the three or four emotions available to them. Except Louis, who always has the startled look of a sleeping pensioner who’s just heard a noise downstairs.
Louis always says ‘You deserve to be on that stage’ to everyone he sees, when realistically that would only be true if he were standing in front of a gallows. Simon needs to find a way of getting better judges on the show – perhaps with some sort of televised judging contest. Gary Barlow’s performance is utterly compelling. His voice has a faraway, hollow quality, as if during a séance his body’s been seized by some blasphemous entity. I keep expecting him to interrupt someone covering ‘Valerie’ with a haunting monologue about the indignities his soul is suffering in hell. Perhaps his ghost can only rest if he uses boot camp to get the bands to solve his own murder. When the triumphant spirit explodes as incandescent light from a screaming Gary’s nose, mouth and eyes, we can all tap the clap button.
I’m surprised Britney Spears managed to get a job on the US X Factor. The last time she went near a judging panel they took her kids away. Britney is pumping weights, and doing yoga and kick-boxing. She will soon hold the title of fittest woman alive that no one wants to fuck. Her fans vented their anger about her lacklustre UK shows. I saw a bit of Britney’s dance routines on the news – in fairness, I thought I was watching Libyan rebels dispose of Gaddafi’s corpse. It’s hardly surprised that Britney doesn’t look totally focused – in fairness, she’s probably trying to work out where she is, who she is and why a voice is telling her to kill. I wonder why famous people even get mental disorders. What tips them over the edge from their usual happy setting of just wanting the whole world to worship them?
Nicole Scherzinger says she’s been feeling lonely since her split from Lewis Hamilton. She confessed that she has no friends in London and has been reduced to dining out with her own staff – as if they were real human beings! Nicole had to fork out thousands for a flight upgrade after X Factor bosses booked her into economy. Luckily, she could put it on her card. If she’d had to busk for it in departures she’d still be there when plate tectonics had solved the problem. Of course, these days former X Factor winner Steve Brookstein travels for free. Simon’s had his skin made into a natty set of matching luggage. To this day he swears that when he opens the shoulder bag he sometimes hears a plaintive ‘We’ll make another album soon, won’t we Si?’ drifting up from features a casual glance might assume were just blemishes in the leather.
You remember Steve Brookstein? ‘What’s the time?’ ‘Steve Brookstein time.’ That one.
I had my fingers crossed that James Arthur would win The X Factor, so that we’d never hear of him again. Do be careful, James. It appears that Simon’s tucked a clause in your contract that should your album flop he can hang your ornately inked pelt from the wall of his walk-in humidor. Fans queued overnight to meet James. I’d queue up overnight to see him, the same way I would have done if I’d been alive in Victorian times and had the chance to see Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. James can now enjoy what being an X Factor winner means. Constant Twitter abuse, one failed album and a brief part in a shit West End musical. James said, ‘I’m probably going to get my teeth fixed. It’s not a vanity thing.’ Well, it is, and it will be like putting twenty-six-inch rims on a wheelie bin.
Fellow X Factor champions Little Mix say they’re bidding to crack America. Shouldn’t they start by trying to crack Britain first? Little Mix show just how little you can achieve without any talent or hard work. Little Mix. Less a band name, more a description of the group’s gene pool. They look so young I just don’t feel comfortable playing the usual girl-band ‘In which order would you?’ game. OK, if you insist. I suppose I’d behead the blonde one first, then beat the other three to death with her corpse. The girls are proud to say they’re teetotal and never touch drugs. They get high on life! And suffer from a desperate addiction to the approval of total strangers. They want to inspire their fans. Good! About time little girls had some proper role models. I can’t be the only parent getting fed up of all that ‘I want to be a vet, I want to be a nurse’ bullshit.
Presumably the first inspirational message of empowerment for their legion of young fans will be, ‘Yes, you too can endorse goods or products as directed by your management.’ Simon wants them to focus on the music. Apparently, in their contract he’s even decreed their vaginas be covered in hot wax before receiving the seal of his holy ring.
Clean-living Little Mix have adopted ‘We won’t steal your boyfriend’ as their motto. It’s a self-help mantra that’s been used unsuccessfully by the members of Westlife, Boyzone and in the adapted form, ‘I won’t steal your boy’, by none other than Michael Jackson. They’ve been described as so likeable they could sell coals to Newcastle. That expression should be updated – how about, ‘They could sell a Federico Fellini boxed set in Newcastle’?
The girls were slammed for using an autocue. An autocue machine, yes, like they have down those autocue bars where hen nights sing ‘I Will Survive’. I hear that they were told not to learn the lyrics to their songs as Simon considers it essential to dull the winners’ powers of recall, so family and past friends don’t hinder reprogramming.
Sharon Osbourne returned to the UK to be an X Factor judge, confirmation apparently coming when a deserted ship, the long-dead skipper lashed to the wheel and the hold containing just a single chest freezer, bumped eerily into a jetty at Southampton. Her return means that Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne are living apart. They’ve stayed together through thick and thin – or Jack and Kelly, as they’re otherwise known.
They wanted to inject something new into the show so they’ve brought back Sharon – who, of course, has had so many new things injected into her you could bounce a coin off her face. Sharon’s set to do X Factor mentoring by Skype. Is Skyping right for an X Factor judge? Maybe I’m tiring of the show but the way I’d most like to see them giving advice is via an Ouija board. Contestants mustn’t worry, as they can ask Simon’s advice at any point, just by writing their question in urine dribbled from an upturned crucifix, then throwing it into the fire. The great thing about Sharon is that she speaks her mind – it’s just a pity that her mind appears to be haunted by the soul of an angry dockworker. Personally, I’ve missed Sharon’s little words of wisdom – to make up for it I’ve had to spike my nan’s tea with