The X Factor And Other Demons

When I was at primary school, I remember that the vast majority of us kids had access to the grand total of four channels. As a result, any halfway major TV event would have about 95% of the audience glued to their seats – while the other 5% videoed it to watch the next day.

So everything from a soap opera death to a new sitcom would bring everyone together in the shared pleasure of communal viewing. Even if you were technically watching it at home on your own, you could rest assured that you’d be swapping fond or scathing reviews with everyone you knew in the classroom the next morning.

This, for me, is as nostalgic a childhood memory as Um Bongo, He Man And the Masters Of The Universe, Granny’s Garden and Beadle’s About.

People slag off the 80s, but it was the shit.

So I have mixed feelings that the one and only show that gets this sort of audience these days – literally the one and only thing you know that just about everyone at work will have watched on Monday morning - is The X Factor. Even The Apprentice doesn’t get an audience like this. And The Apprentice is about a thousand times better.

Just to clarify, I don’t hate Simon Cowell, or object to his vast wealth. There’s no reason why I should, as he’s not taking any of it off me. I don’t phone into the obviously-fixed-so-it-doesn’t-go-against-the-most-potentially-profitable-candidate vote-ins. I don’t text into the stupid rigged right-before-the-ad-break X Factor competitions, where you’re supposed to win an all-expenses paid trip to New York, but actually just win an insanely high mobile phone bill.

I also don’t buy shitty albums by the likes of Joe McElderry or Alexandra Burke.

And since ITV isn’t dependent on the archaic and ridiculous TV licence (which must seem as surreal to the Americans as needing a licence to own a chair), I’m damn sure I’m not, and never have been, making the man any richer.

This is market-forces democracy in action, and fair play to the man – if you don’t like him and are annoyed by his lavish lifestyle, you don’t have to contribute a single penny of your income to maintaining it. All public donations to the Simon Cowell money machine are made on an entirely voluntary basis.

Now, if only one could say the same thing about the Royal Family.

(It’s very similar to how I feel about Wayne Rooney, off topic. As one who couldn’t give two hoots about football and has never contributed a single penny towards swelling the coffers of the beautiful game, I couldn’t give a tin whistle if young Mr Shrek is earning a million pounds a day from his self-financing industry - for the simple reason that it doesn’t affect my life in any way, shape or form whatsoever.

Yet from all the tabloid hate, you’d think Wayne Rooney was running an empire of sweat shops for consumptive third world toddlers - occasionally branching out into trafficking under-aged prostitutes and making lampshades out of human skin. I mean for fuck’s sake, the guy’s just making a shitload of money playing football and shagging a few chavvy orange pros now and again. He’s not selling arms to Mugabe or manufacturing land mines. Or breaking international law by illegally invading countries which just happen to have vast quantities of oil lying about, or facilitating torture with a nod and a wink while making long pious speeches about human rights. There are far worse people in this world than Wayne Rooney, and some of them are leading major superpowers. Get a fucking grip.

Although I really do love watching tabloid journalists in a pious moral-high-ground feeding frenzy over the Wayne Rooney millions. It’s a glorious spectacle, and not pathetically hypocritical in the slightest. I mean, I’m quite sure that if anyone offered, say, Jan Moir £250K a week to do the same old shit elsewhere, she’d shake her head earnestly, flinching in instinctive revulsion. ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t possibly countenance your offer. Not only would it be ethically wrong to betray my long-term employers, I couldn’t live with myself earning such an obscene sum of money when the rest of the country’s struggling to keep their heads above water. It would be immoral and grotesque and a vile spectacle of naked greed. In fact, I hereby demand that you cut my salary to the national average of 25K, and put the remainder towards plugging the national defecit.’

And If you look to the right, ladies and gentlemen, you can see a majestic herd of flying pigs migrating to the plains of the Serengetti.)

But back to the X Factor.

Just as I can’t generate any particular animosity towards Simon Cowell, I also don’t dislike Danni Minogue, because it would be like disliking magnolia paint. And I don’t dislike Louis Walsh, because he’s got a lovely Irish accent, and having a lovely Irish accent automatically makes you warm and whimsical and cuddly and hard to hate. It’s really amazing how good the Irish are at all this PR malarkey. They ought to charge the Muslims for lessons.

And I don’t dislike Cheryl Cole, because she’s so drop-dead off-the-charts stunning, it’s impossible for any woman to openly dislike her without sounding like a bitter jealous dog. (Incidentally, if you’re one of those women who say in mixed groups ‘it’s all hair and makeup with her, I could look just as good with that much money’ - a word of advice. When you say this sort of thing in mixed company, the only reason why the men in the group don’t laugh in your face and leave you feeling about two inches tall for the next three weeks is because they’re too bloody nice. And sooner or later, one of your audience won’t be. You’re on borrowed time. So please, stop. Now.)

Yet while I have no animosity for any of The X Factor’s judging panel, the fact is that I dislike the show itself more and more with every passing day. A bit like George Osborne.*

Not because it’s damaging to society. If you look to reality TV for your social conscience and moral values, you’re a dick anyway. And God knows, it’s more morally viable than the old talent shows back in the day. At least it hasn’t discovered Jim Davidson and launched him on the world - a breakthrough about as welcome and socially beneficial as discovering and launching genital warts.

Nor because of the ‘think of the children’ angle. Really, you don’t have to worry that watching the X Factor is going to make your little angels judgmental, status-obsessed and vicious. Kids don’t need any help becoming judgmental, status-obsessed and vicious. The vast majority have a raw and startling natural genius in these areas already. Remember your playground days?

No, my problem with The X Factor is altogether simpler and less high-minded.

it’s just that it’s totally and irredeemably fucking awful.

‘Ah, but it’s great entertainment,’ I hear you say. ‘You can’t deny that.’

Sometimes, this argument can lull me into an unwilling nodding-dog sort of response, as can other bits of well-whether-you-like-it-or-not philistine wisdom. Like when people say ‘well it may not be culture, but you can’t deny that Jeffrey Archer’s a great storyteller. Or that Michael Bay’s a good director.’

Except when suddenly, something goes ‘click’ in my mind, and I realise I’m unwillingly nodding in agreement with complete nonsense, and I finally feel compelled to speak up.

‘Hang on a minute. No, Michael Bay isn’t even remotely a good director.

‘Not if you’ve got an IQ above room temperature.

‘He’s a fucking appalling director.

‘The one and only thing Michael Bay has going for him as a director is the simple fact that a lot of people are total fucking idiots who wouldn’t know a decent movie from a twenty-foot pile of exploding cat shit.’

Some things achieve huge mass-market popularity because they’re exceptionally good – and happily, sometimes true quality achieves widespread recognition.

On this side, I’m putting Innocent smoothies, Harry Potter, Andrew Lloyd Webber, The Office and Stephen King.

Other things achieve huge mass-market popularity because the world is full of tasteless slack-jawed knuckle-dragging cretins - and every single one of these Morlock-like creatures has the cultural vote.

On this side, I’m putting McDonalds, Twilight, High School Fucking Musical, Little Fucking Britain and Dan Fucking Brown.

And no prizes for guessing which side I’m putting The X Factor on.

Everything about it is fucking awful.

I’ve gone into all the whys and wherefores of my X Factor hatred before. And because I really hate repeating myself and duplicating posts on here, I won’t go through the same old list again when I can just link to it. Or, better yet, not bother. Because I can’t find it. It’s in the archives somewhere, if you want to have a look.

But this season, we can add the intelligence-insulting belief that we won’t know that Cher Lloyd (a young lady who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a terminally ill Cheryl Cole with a crap makeup artist and the world’s worst hangover) is personally responsible for her rap mash-up of Hard Knock Life from Annie.

‘I really love what you did with that song. It was so creative and original and unique,’ Cheryl and the other judges enthused.

Clearly speaking in the breathtakingly contemptuous assumption that all their viewers are cretinous nitwits with zero musical knowledge and goldfish-like memories - who don’t have access to Google Search, and wouldn’t know how to use it even if we did. And therefore have no idea that the exact same song was done the exact same way by Jay-Z.

(Although in Cher Lloyd’s defence, she brought something new to it in the form of dancing like a disturbed anorexic pisshead who’s just realizing someone stuck an eckie in her last double vodka.

Also, the unbelievably fucking annoying stage-school gurning was hers alone. So you know, credit where it’s due.)

Then again, you can’t really blame the programme makers for thinking like this. I daresay they’re operating under the quite reasonable assumption that - if the viewing public weren’t total and utter fucking retards - we wouldn’t be watching this crap in the first place.

And then there’s the identikit forgettable blandness of all the acts.

It’s like being shown ten streaks of piss on a wall, with the expectation that you’ll bite your nails worrying which one will get washed away at the end of the show.

You know it’s come to something when this year’s crop of wannabees make Joe McElderry look like John Lennon. There’s more star quality on view at my local Job Centre Plus.

Hate the X factor, anyway.

Although I do think it’s quite funny that, for an entire generation, ‘Wagnerian’ will now mean ‘reminds me of that man who looks like Robert Downey Junior playing a disturbed tramp who’s just raided Julio Iglesias’ wardrobe…’

J x

*Not as much, obviously. But then again, I don’t hate anything in the world as much as George Osborne. Except maybe Ugg boots.