It’s not just the X Factor that needs the axe factor, Simon
YEs, we have all been on a journey and now at last, that journey has ended. Traditional saturday night television is finished, the weekend family-friendly get-together is over. apart from strictly Come Dancing, nothing is ever going to be the same again on the ruined saturday schedules. Consider the evidence. pasha is leaving strictly, ant is still in the Dec doghouse and simon Cowell announced this week that The X Factor is ‘over as we know it’.
Is that so? What we actually know, simon, is that it has been over for years. It is more over than an apple turnover squelched under the wheels of a steam-roller, under the light of an imploding supernova. It has flatlined, ceased to be, it is history. Or, gulp, is it? In a sign of the changing times, the pop mogul has cancelled all X Factor auditions this year, but there are worrying rumours that he could introduce a celebrity or all-star version instead.
This would pave the way for the return of acts such as Rikki Loney and Kandy Rain, Bad Lashes and Eoghan Quigg — but what have we done to deserve that?
PERHAPS the writing was on the wall towards the end of the last series, when audience figures plummeted to 4.7million — the lowest in the show’s 15-year history.
We’ve come a long way baby from the 2010 peak, when more than 17 million viewers tuned in for a final in which Matt Cardle, One Direction and Rebecca Ferguson competed for the top honours.
since then the show lurched from bad to worse.
Every year even the judges got more risible, with a nadir reached when Robbie Williams’ wife ayda was given a gig. she’s perfectly nice, I’m sure — but what does a sometime hollywood actress know about making stars and pop music?
probably as much as Nick Grimshaw, Rita Ora and — shudder — Cheryl Cole. all terrible judges who dragged down the brand. No one cared about their opinions anyway and it was obvious the only careers they cared about were their own.
Yet on and on it staggered. On saturday nights an everdwindling band of masochistic viewers put down their intellect defibrillators and tuned in each weekend to watch the showbiz equivalent of a corpse dragging itself across a putrid wasteland before self- immolating on a burning pyre of Generation Game videos.
Who are these people who are still entertained by no-hopers such as panda (‘like the bear’) singing You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman) while sounding as if a hungry crocodile had attached itself to her big toe?
Who knows, but perhaps they are the same ones who also watch The Voice (currently on ITV with a 4.7 million audience), the talent show which has distinguished itself by failing to find any talent whatsoever over seven dreary series.
and there is no respite from wannabe mediocrity on the BBC, where The Greatest Dancer is currently being broadcast to 3.4 million viewers.
It also has Cheryl Cole as a judge, which makes me wonder if the entire talent and challenge show franchises exist merely to keep her in employment.
But really, haven’t we had enough? It has become so cynical, with all the manipulated sentiment, the sob stories and the personal journeys fraught with disaster, as tuneless chumps thump through routines or sing in memory of their recently departed nan. Over the last few years it has become harder to pan through the dross, forever hoping to find a golden nugget of something real; something that isn’t practised or calculated.
But now perhaps we won’t have to any more.
Tuneful dinner ladies, a singing plasterer from Durham, Kayleigh from Liverpool with a tattoo of simon on her bottom?
any number of hopefuls who, in time- honoured tradition, insisted that it was ‘my time’ and also ‘now or never’ before being booted back to oblivion? They have all gone. It is over. simon Cowell has had a full body wax, a big think and fired up the jet-ski before going round and round in decreasing circles.
Now he has decided that nobodies are a no-no and only stars can audition in a Max X Factor, in a bid to be even bigger stars.
Why does this make my heart sink and think of earnest Olly Murs going through the motions again?
Is this really what is going to pass for saturday night entertainment? It almost makes me long for Noel’s house party.
almost.