Tag: X-Factor

7 Reasons I Will Watch The X-Factor Next Year

Before 20 million of you groan, this isn’t one of those ‘The X-Factor is rubbish’ posts. I have long adhered to the maxim, ‘if you don’t like it, switch it off’. Which is something I have accomplished in every year previous to this one. This year though, I lived with one of the 20 million. Which meant I saw more of it than I really wanted to. Next year, though, it’s not happening. Unless these drastic changes are made.

1. Louis Walsh. Quite simple, he must stop being a twat. And by that I mean, he must stop being a twat. I like to be challenged intellectually, which is why I call my parents during the show. What I can’t stand is people stating the bloody obvious. And that includes Walsh saying, “Matt, you’re in the final”. Yes, obviously he’s in the bloody final. If Walsh stops repeating everything I can find out by pressing the ‘i’ on my remote control then I could be in for the long-haul.

2. Simon Cowell. This isn’t an anti-Cowell moment, the guy has created something that makes him a lot of money, well done to him. What he must do next year, though, is stop pretending he is actually making difficult decisions. If I want to watch over-acting I can watch the bloody-awful but painfully addictive Miranda. I want him to act like he does in the supermarket when faced with the choice of either an apple or a banana. There’s no pretence here. Cowell knows he wants the banana and so he grabs it. No dramas, he just gets the job done. If he brings this attitude with him next year, we have half a chance. Assuming he also does something with his hair.

3. Cheryl Cole. She must lose her right hand. Or, at the very least, it must be tied behind her back. I am very appreciative of the fact that she can’t help the annoying accent and the stupid comments, but she can stop doing that bloody salute. It makes her look like a camp toy soldier.

4. Dannii Minogue. She’s a bit like white bread. Nothing drastically wrong with her, just a bit plastic-y. I would much prefer something more substantial. Wholemeal bread. Or, as she is called in this case, Kylie. She’s just better in all areas.

5. Media Blackout. I don’t read the tabloids for a reason. I’m not interested in the soap opera of life and I like reading words that contain more than two syllables. I appreciate that’s two reasons, but, to be honest, there are probably five more. But that doesn’t matter. The point is, I don’t read them because I don’t like them. That is easy enough to do and you’ll be pleased to know I am very accomplished at not buying The News Of The World. The problem comes when every radio and TV show talks about it. I don’t think that’s fair. As things stand, I would have to emigrate to Venus to avoid all the nonsense spouted about the show. If there was a media blackout I’d happily go as far as Middlesborough. That sounds like a good compromise to me.

6. One Night Special. No dragging the series out for months on end. The show starts at 7pm on a Saturday night and is finished by 10pm. Contestants can’t sing for longer than thirty seconds each and every ten minutes someone is voted off. No, actually, they are shot.

7. Sports Round. I like sport, but it was seldom mentioned in the X-Factor this year. Next year, instead of the usual vote-off by the judges, there will be a sports quiz between the bottom two contestants. Hosted by Henry Blofeld. And you’ll be able to play along using the red button and throw popcorn at the TV.

December 14, 2010
7 Reasons Sir Elton Might Like To Take A Look At His Own Songs

Hello, I’m back. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, that is not enough to make your Tuesday. As a result I shall also furnish your day with a 7 Reasons post. You may have heard that Sir Elton John has been having a pop at the songwriters of today. According to the BBC, he thinks they’re awful. ‘Fair enough’, I thought, ‘but let’s just have a listen to some of Elton’s stuff to find out how much better he was’. The results are staggering. Here are 7 Reasons Elton should probably listen to his Greatest Hits again.*

1. Song – Your Song. Lyric – “I don’t have much money but boy if I did, I’d buy a big house where we both could live.” It’s hardly the stuff of Chaucer, Hardy or Dickens is it?

2. Song – Crocodile Rock. Lyric – “But the biggest kick I ever got, was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock, while the other kids were rocking round the clock, we were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock.” I know this song is self-referential, but even so, it’s still a load of nonsense. I wouldn’t have thought the hallmark of a great songwriter was to make up some stupid dance name. I suspect Elton would laugh in Marc’s face if Mr Fearns approached him with the 7 Reasons Shuffle. Especially if he was wearing my mask.

3. Song – Daniel. Lyric – “Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane, I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain.” How convenient Daniel was going to Spain. Mind you, I suppose if he had been going to Derry he could have caught the ferry. Just a shame they don’t do a tram to Iran really.

4. Song – Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting. Lyric – “It’s getting late have you seen my mates, Ma tell me when the boys get here, it’s seven o’clock and I want to rock, want to get a belly full of beer.” Hardly the sort of message one wants to be sending out. Elton John and Grand Theft Auto have a lot to answer for.

5. Song – Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. Lyric – All of them. This song is a cliche. From start to finish. In that respect, the songwriting is awful. It also doesn’t address the solution to the sun going down, which, in most parts of the world, is to switch on the light. Or light a candle. Actually, I’m glad Elton never lit a candle, he’d have probably written a song about it.

6. Song – Honky Cat. Lyric – “When I look back, boy I must have been green, bopping in the country, fishing in a stream.” I’m not a cynic, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone who is green and bops in the country also goes down to fish in the stream. I think it has more to do with the fact that it rhymes. Personally, for all the sense this song makes, I would have preferred it to have been, ‘When I look back, yowzer I must have been blond, chugging in the hamlet, pissing in a pond’. But I guess the tempo is not quite the same with that is it?

7. Song – Rocket Man. Lyric – “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.” No, neither is Preston. Talk about stating the bloody obvious. And whose idea was it to write a song about a fictional astronaut going on a fictional journey to Mars anyway?

*Edit: In response to all of you who told me Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics and not Elton, yes, I do know this. Elton still saw the lyrics fit enough to sing though. As a result, this post passes muster.

October 19, 2010
7 Reasons Everyone And Everything Should Have Auto-Tune

You don’t have to be interested in the X-Factor to know about autotunegate or whatever it is called. I am the living proof of that. To be honest, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Auto-tune is good. It makes things bearable. Just think how good life would be if everything and everyone had auto-tune.

1. Annoying Voices. No more high-pitched Joe Pasquale shrieking. No more Andy Murray monotones. No more confusing regional accents. No more chavs. Just a straightforward English accent that everyone can understand.

2. The Monarchy. They are bit like marmite. You either love them or you hate them. Or you are indifferent to them – as I suspect at least 90% of the world’s population is to marmite. I have long thought that the hate for the Monarchy is borne out of their accents. They are well-spoken. Which immediately alienates anyone who pronounces ‘Good Morning’ as ‘Alright fella’. If a member of the Monarchy had auto-tune they would be able to walk into The Tattooed Arms, order a bevy and become darts team captain before the end of the night. ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charlie then really could become the people’s King.

3. Movie Accents. My top three awful movie accents in ascending order. Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Horrendous. The lot of them. And no, Dick Van Dyke’s cockney does not fall into the category of, ‘so bad it’s quite charming’. It’s not charming. It’s mute-button inducing. And it will always haunt me. Everytime I look at a chimney.

4. Polystyrene. Arrrrrggggggggghhhhhhh! Which git invented a material that not only feels like…erm…polystyrene, but also sounds like Alan Carr on helium when rubbed?*

5. Nails On A Chalkboard. Arrrrrggggggggghhhhhhh! (Again). Auto-tune would turn this into the Intermezzo from ‘Cavalleria Rusticana. Or the theme tune to Postman Pat. Anything really. Just not nails on a chalkboard. Or polystyrene. Or Joe Pasquale. Or Dick Van Dyke. Or Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

6. The French. It’s not the fact that I don’t like them, it’s the fact that whatever is said in a French accent sounds sexy. At no point should, ‘I take the cat and I put it in the bin,’ sound at all sexy. Yet, said with Frenchness, it does. Have a go. (Insert you speaking in a French accent here). See? What you’ve just done is wrong. The French accent should therefore be auto-tuned to English. ‘I take the cat and I put it in the bin,’ will never sound sexy in a Coventry burr.

7. Nuclear Warning Siren. I hope I never get to hear it for real. At least not in the next year. (There’s the Ashes and two world cups for England to win). But just supposing for a minute that I did hear it. There is a fair chance it might be the last thing I ever hear. I therefore want to go out in as relaxed a mood as possible. Not listening to something that sounds like a dolphin being drilled through the eye. The Nuclear Warning Siren should therefore be auto-tuned. Then we can all fall asleep listening to Geri Halliwell being penetrated by a unicorn.

*I can see what you might be thinking here. You have the wrong end of the stick.**

**I can see what you might be thinking here. You’re a pervert.

August 25, 2010
7 Reasons I Don’t Care About Cheryl Bloody Cole

1. Thug. The nation loves Cheryl Cole, so we are told. Do we? I don’t. I’m quite sure that Sophie Amogbokpa doesn’t – that’s the toilet attendant and part-time law student that Cheryl Cole was convicted of assaulting in a nightclub toilet in 2003. The judge at the trial wasn’t particularly taken with her either, criticizing her for having “…showed no remorse whatsoever.” That’s at least three people who don’t love Cheryl Cole. I’m pretty sure my cat doesn’t like her either.

2. Heartbreak. We’ve spent the last two weeks reading about how heartbroken Cheryl Cole is over her husband’s dalliances and now newspapers are reporting that she has a new boyfriend. That’s not heartbreak, it’s not even heartslightlybent or heartatinyweenybitchipped. We can’t blame her for this though, we’ve got an insatiable media hungry for any new angle on this story – it’s selling a lot of newspapers, after all. Poor Cheryl is obviously being exploited by them. After all, if she knew that her every move was being scrutinized by the media, would she entertain a man in her hotel room until 4am? Of course not, unless she wanted to wring yet more publicity out of the story…oh, silly me.

3. America. After the Ashley Cole phone-text-photo story broke earlier this month, Cheryl Cole went off to America to spend some time away from the media spotlight, choosing as her destination the quiet, secluded backwater of Los Angeles. Purely coincidentally, this is where most US television executives are based. Did you know that Cheryl is being considered as a judge on the American X Factor, which Simon Cowell will be launching there next year? How propitious that she should find herself in a town full of television executives – who may not have heard of her previously – at the very moment she has an enormous press-pack following her every move.

4. Attractiveness. Another popular myth about Cheryl Cole is that everyone finds her attractive. This is not true, I don’t. I find her flawless face, small, perky nose and large, almond-shaped eyes a bit weird to be honest. She has the perfect, symmetrical, neotenous visage of a Disney character. Is this really something grown-ups find attractive? Not me. I don’t fancy Cheryl Cole and I don’t fancy Pocahontas. Nor do I lust after The Little Mermaid.

5. Ashley. Whatever you think of Ashley Cole and the way he conducts himself, it’s hard to fault him over the way he’s conducted himself since the story broke. He’s kept quiet about it. He’s just shut up and got on with trying to recover from his ankle injury in time for the World Cup. I’ll level with you, I can’t stand Ashley Cole. I think that the revelations that emerged a couple of years ago – that he cheated on his wife and paused during sex with a girl he’d met at a nightclub, so he could throw up on her bedroom floor, before resuming sex – show an appalling lack of respect for his wife, his marriage, women in general, and carpets. He is obviously a foul and abhorrent rotter. So when Ashley Cole is the one setting the example of how to behave decorously in the face of the media onslaught over the break-up, something is seriously wrong.

6. Cynicism. You can call me cynical but…actually, forget the but, you can call me cynical – I can live with that. I find the whole media obsession with the Coles a bore, and I find Cheryl’s manipulation of that interest exploitative and wholly self-serving. I may have a very cynical view of the whole thing, but it’s nothing when compared to the cynicism with which she is wringing every last bit of sympathy and publicity from the coverage.

7. Does anyone else care? Okay, I have just spent a good bit of time thinking about it, and a fair amount of time writing about it, but I don’t actually care about Cheryl Cole or Ashley Cole (except during England matches), I’m just annoyed by all of the media coverage that their break-up is generating. I’m sure that there are far more important events happening in the world than the break-up of a thug who can’t sing and a footballer who can’t keep his trousers on, I just don’t know what they are because the news agenda is dominated by this non-story. Perhaps something is happening in Haiti, the Falklands, Madeira, parliament, Afghanistan or Northern Ireland. Who knows?

Do you care about Cheryl and Ashley Cole’s break-up? If so, please tell me why via the comments section, as I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something I’m missing.

February 24, 2010
7 Reasons 2010 Will Be Great

1. The Winter Olympics. We’re only a few months away from Vancouver 2010 and what an Olympics it is going to be. Great Britain have their most successful games ever after clinching Gold medals in both the male and female snowball fighting events. Unfortunately they lose out to Canada in the final of the gritting competition, but the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown still hails the achievement as “remarkable” and “a terrific reflection of what global warming can do for our country”.

2. David Acorah will attempt to contact Michael Jackson again. In a live event, that is watched by sixteen people, Acorah will accidentally moonwalk off his balcony. Although he doesn’t die in the accident he does land on David Icke. Celebrations all round.

3. Osama Bin Laden is found alive. Rather alarmingly though, he’s found to be living in a quiet hamlet in Shropshire. His whereabouts are only discovered after he sends Barack Obama a message on twitter but forgets to uncheck the ‘show location’ box. A transatlantic battle between Jonathan Ross and David Letterman then ensues as the chat show hosts argue over who should have the first interview. Letterman finally wins after the BBC refuse to let Osama have a free taxi ride home afterwards.

4. England will win the football World Cup. Yes, so it is only thanks to Steven Gerrard’s elaborate dive in the dying seconds – a move which results in the ball flying into the back of the net via his posterior – but no one in Britain cares. Not even the Welsh or the Scottish. Gerrard is soon dubbed Golden Arse and the people of England go on a seven-day spending spree that lifts the country out of the recession. The new Prime Minister, Big Dave C, recommends himself for a knighthood as a result. It’s rejected.

5. Jennifer Aniston changes her tie. Woohoo!

6. Submarine Girl. We’ll have to wait until October for this one, but when it arrives it will dominate our lives. For a couple of hours on a Thursday night you won’t be able to move for the coverage. Basically the news channels are going to pick up on the story that a girl has apparently started heading down the Californian coast in her father’s experimental submarine. Thankfully she has left the periscope up which means the planes overhead can follow her progress and beam back live coverage to show on TVs across the world. After an hour, the submarine eventually becomes grounded on Santa Monica beach. A policeman is first on the scene. He examines the sub. There is no one onboard. Speculation mounts that she may have fallen out of the escape hatch and drowned. Two hours later though and she is found alive. Inside her fathers storm chasing balloon.

7. X-Factor cancelled. The reality show is shown the door after 43 million people sign up to a Facebook group that demands Simon Cowell is replaced in the line-up by the actor Simon Callow. Cowell laments the protest as “stupid” and in an explosive interview with Fern Britton – that brings back memories of Frost/Nixon – he claims, “the only reason my trousers are this bloody high is because unlike the losers in this country I can afford more material.” Cowell is asked to leave the UK immediately by Her Majesty The Queen. ITV bring back Blind Date. With Dale Winton.

January 1, 2010