Talent Void

Many of you will like to watch it. Many of you will claim you’re forced to watch it by a significant other. Many of you - the sensible ones - will hate it.

“I’ve got the X Factor,” some gurning idiot will say to the camera whilst using their arms to “cleverly” make an X. Thousands of other gurning idiots will cheer in the background.

For those of you with TVs, your weekends are buggered until Christmas.

It’s nothing more than a machine to print money for the high-trousered one, Mr “are those your real teeth?” Cowell.

How many years has this dross being going? It feels like it’s been around forever.

The concept certainly has. If you walked into a meeting with TV executives and said: “I’ve got a great idea for a show. Some people sing and then everyone votes for their favourite,” you’d be shown the door quicker than Ronnie Pickering at a yoga retreat.

The genius thing that Cowell did is to somehow claim that he invented the concept of talent shows and sell the rights to other countries, showing the rest of the world is no cleverer than this country.

It wouldn’t be so bad if a range of musical styles were covered, but they’re not. It’s all carefully-tailored to sound exactly like what’s popular at the moment. Sadly, at the moment that means an autotuned, synthetic dirge of pointless bollocks.

They do a rock night sometimes, I understand. You’d be hard-pressed to hear a proper rock song performed like a proper rock song. Instead you’ll be subjected to The Guy Who’s Good At Swing singing Born To Be Wild in the style of Frank Sinatra, complete with big band; The R&B Dude rapping and beatboxing over a version of Enter Sandman; The Quirky One Who Never Wears Shoes whispering System of a Down’s Chop Suey whilst pretending to strum an acoustic guitar; and The Diva going through the full routine of vocal gymnastics on a version of Hammer Smashed Face by Cannibal Corpse.

Even worse than the actual “preformances,” as Gary Barlow would have said, are the contestants’ back stories.

It’s not enough to turn up with an “I like to sing and want to be a star” approach anymore. No, if you want to get noticed, you’ll need “my entire family were killed when a drone crashed into the house and exploded, but they loved my singing” or “I’m an orphan and I was raised by wolves who all now have cancer”. The greater the sob-story, the greater their chance of making it on to the live shows. I imagine there are a few people with real talent who just live normal lives and have never experienced any tragedy who have been sadly overlooked.

The judges, or “mentors” as they are supposed to be called, are just as bad.

“You totally nailed that,” they’ll say, after listening to a total car-crash of a song which wasn’t even that good to start with.

“You gave it a million percent,” they’ll also say, demonstrating a lack of understanding of mathematics.

The absolute worst is the self-congratulation. “I chose that song myself,” a smug mentor will say, as if that’s a greater achievement than a person getting on stage and massacring it.

Cowell probably spends hours touching himself as he thinks about the huge amount of money he’s made from the absolute shit he’s managed to inflict on the weak and vulnerable.

So many people have been brainwashed into believing it to be entertainment that it will probably never go away.

Any of you who watch it are responsible for the torture of the rest of us. Give yourselves a big hand. And slap yourselves in the face with it.