Taste for Honey
Why the big hurry Holly?
BBC Watchdog’s “Have a Steph McGovern: British look at this Waitrose with meat Lamb Hotpot but from New (points to ingredients) if you look at Zealand. Likewise, it’s the Italian Beef cannelone, beef.” To the made with British We barricades, comrades! this must rise up against outrage! CHAAAARGE!!! A BIT of culture on BBC2 last night.
Balletboyz: Young Men, a dance company’s dialogue- free feature film, following “a group brought together by the indiscriminate brutality of war who struggle to maintain their humanity in an unending cycle of combat and death”.
A right barrel of laughs, by the sound of it. But it’ll have to wait. It’s Disco Week on The X Factor and I want to know what Honey G has in store.
If Aardman Animations made rappers.
She has become, to my surprise, the act I’m rooting for.
Partly because she can actually rap, a fact I’d overlooked.
But mostly because she’s the antidote to what the live shows really are – a record label’s sales drive.
This series, you see, has been a game of two halves.
The return of the room auditions, with the panel of old, rediscovered X Factor’s sense of fun. But from Bootcamp onwards it remembered its bad old habits, like opening the phone vote lines before anyone has sung.
The worst trait, though, is the scornful treatment of its audience.
We weren’t deemed entitled to be informed, for example, that Four of Diamonds, presented as a long- time girlband, were assembled from rejected soloists.
It’s entirely unnecessary – producers made clear in 2010 that One Direction were manufactured this way, and record sales suggest no one took exception.
So viewers began voting Four of Diamonds into the bottom two until even Simon Cowell realised they’d never warm to them and he voted them out.
But not before one final charm offensive by playing the sympathy card and highlighting negative comments aimed at them on social media: “‘When it comes to singing live, you are boring. You guys are terrible. You sound like a bunch of cats being strangled’.”
Which is, to say the least, a bit rich of X Factor to get on its high horse about trolling. The show has spent 12 years throwing insults in people’s faces.
And to single out a feline- based criticism? Oh the irony, given Cowell’s mastery down the years: “You sounded like three cats being dragged up the motorway.”
“Do you know what you sounded like, honestly? Someone stepping on two cats.”
“I don’t know what cats being squashed sound like in Lithuania, but I now have a pretty good idea.”
Yet last Sunday, even as the girls faced the exit, Louis Walsh insisted: “Four of Diamonds have turned a corner.”
And reached their destination. But now it’s all down to them to find the correct house number. The satnav can take them only as far as the right street, and the pizza is getting cold on the back seat. TWANG! This Morning host Holly Willoughby’s ears pricked up on hearing “orgasm doctor” Andrea Pennington say women can achieve one through thoughts alone. Holly: “So if you started thinking what