Wannabe’s 50s brows looked as if they’d performed with the Rat Pack
As a million viewers desert X Factor for its latest series...
THE opening episode of The X Factor’s 14th series has drawn the lowest ratings for a launch show since the programme began in 2004. Just 5.5million people tuned in to watch the ITV talent show’s return on Saturday night, marking a dip of almost a million from last year. The low figures are even more damning given that the show does not go head-to-head with Strictly Come Dancing until next week. Last year, Strictly dwarfed The X Factor in the ratings battle, regularly pulling in double the number of viewers. Here, Jan Moir gives her verdict on the opening episode.
Like everyone else, what i really hate about The X Factor are those clunking attempts to manipulate the sentiments of its audiences. Sob stories, personal journeys fraught with disaster, tuneless chumps performing in memory of their recently departed pet budgies? After 13 series in which producers and contestants have shamelessly played every emotional trick in the book, we are so over all that.
So i was initially unmoved by the class of 2017, including a singing personal trainer who sounded as if someone was doing the plank on her larynx and various contestants turning up with their blimmin’ babies, hoping for a bit of sympathy and a lovely recording contract so that junior would get his num-nums and not go to bed hungry that night. Or something like that. Bah!
What kind of fools do they take us for? Then they brought on the crying grandad, and i was completely undone. Pass the X Factorstrength tissues, please. The blighters have done it again.
it all started with Holly Tandy from Barnsley, an absolutely classic X Factor contestant in that she was 15 going on 35, with a pair of 1950s style eyebrows that looked as if they had previously performed with the Rat Pack at the Copacabana. Or at least gone to school by themselves.
Holly gave it her all, and sometimes it was too much. Judge Simon Cowell told her to stop copying American singers. Nicole Scherzinger told her to stop waving her arms about, which was a bit rich, all things considered. But she was through to the next round and in the wings her proud grandad could hold back his tears no longer. He was comforted with a manful embrace from host Dermot O’Leary, the show’s consummate commiserator and huggerin-chief. We all sobbed together.
it was quite a moment, especially for those of us who pan through the X Factor shallows every year, searching for a golden nugget of something real; for a gesture or emotion that is not practised or calculated.
As both audience and competitors have grown more knowing and cynical over the years, this has proved increasingly difficult.
However, the 14th series opened strongly at the weekend – despite low viewing figures – and showed, i thought, a bit of energy and a welcome return to form despite the decline of recent years.
There were interesting acts, including an endearing duo called Jack and Joel, a dinner lady called Gaga with Shirley Bassey tonsils, adopted Shanaya and a singing plasterer called Sam Black, who was a cross between a rather feral Tommy Steele and Harry Styles, if you can imagine such a creature. Curly, but frightening. Minus points for bringing along his baby, mind you. Meanwhile, kayleigh from Liverpool had a strong voice and a tattoo of Simon on her bottom while Joanne from Liverpool vowed, in time-honoured tradition, that it was ‘my time’ and also ‘now or never’ before she was booted off the show.
Also noticeable by their absence are all those hopeless judges of yesteryear – including Cheryl Tweedy, Rita Ora and Nick Grimshaw. No one cared about their opinions anyway – and it was obvious the only careers they cared about were their own. At least Cowell, along with veterans Sharon Shat Osborne and Louis Walsh have proven track records in the music business. And Nicole and sometime guest judge Alesha Dixon wear nice earrings, don’t they?
There they sit at their desk, the politburo of pop, the frozen-faced eminences from the Jurassic age of entertainment.
One imagines that Si, Shar and Louis have all been bleached, peeled, prinked and pumped with enough age-defying chemicals that if you put them in your fridge, they would never go off. Nicole is centuries younger, of course.
Her job is to bring the glamour and allow hopeful youths from council estates on the Wirral to gently perv over her. She accepts their compliments and kisses like a queen allowing sooty urchins to touch her ermine hem.
i love Nicole, because she has the presence of someone who exists on helium and cottage cheese, and you never know what she is going to say next, only that it won’t make much sense. ‘You’ve got a whitehit soull and dh heart,’t’ sheh told one contestant. ‘i just wanted to squeeze his cheeks,’ she said of someone else.
So much of the X Factor is still complete nonsense, of course. A group called Rake Su were vague about their origins but sang to a multi-layered, professionally-produced track, complete with backing singers.
Grace from Blackburn had auditioned before, burbled a sob story about never making it, then sang a beautiful, self-penned song, with a perfect musical arrangement. it’s a miracle how these things happen, isn’t it?
The judges were searching, as ever, for ‘likeability’ while Simon was looking for ‘someone who represents Britain’.
He found it in ‘ born-and-bred’ Scouser Anthony Russell, who not only had auditioned years before, but turned up with a black eye because he got beaten up.
That’s the spirit of the country – and the show – i know and love.
‘Exists on helium and cottage cheese’