The X-Factor: Week Four

Excitable Voiceover Man: Last weekend! On the X FACTUH! THE COMPETITION REACHED! NEW! HEIGHTS! New heights of boredom, perhaps. I was LITERALLY too bored for words by last week’s show. Which means there was no blog. Because I did not have the words. But tonight we had a horny Mary Byrne so obviously I’ve found my muse again. Notable events last week: Katie Waissel was good (but still annoying) and John Adeleye went home. No one cared. THIS WEEK! The theme is Halloween. As ever with the X-Factor, they’ve decided to take the theme about as seriously as they did when Matt Cardle decided that his musical hero was someone with one song, but I’ll do my best to explain how songs like Shakespeare’s Sister’s ballad Stay, and that Venus Song From the Gillette Ads For Ladies With Hairy Legs can possibly be considered Halloweeny. On with the show!

Judges! Simon Cowell is wearing fangs. All the better to feast on the profits from the show, then. First up is Mary Boorne, whose intro video drama is that thus far she has failed to be contemporary with any of her song selections. Her answer to this criticism is to perform Barry Manilow’s 1973 hit Could It Be Magic (Halloween Link: Barry Manilow is a Vampire; that unnaturally youthful visage isn’t from plastic surgery, it’s from drinking the bodily fluids of lithe young men). Excellent strategy there, Louis. In fairness, as Queen of the Boybands, Louis was probably thinking more of Take That’s version. Released in 1992. Eighteen years ago. So yeah, very contemporary. I can’t believe I’ve gone 94 words into this paragraph without mentioning the fact that Mary is wearing SPARKLY RED HORNS. It is easily the most amazing thing on television ever, watching her sashay around stage with glittery devil horns. The performance is what we’ve come to expect from Mary – confident and vocally assured. She’s like what Susan Boyle would’ve been if she hadn’t been dropped on her head as a child and got laid every now and then. Judges! Dannii is positive, Cheryl is apathetic and Simon loved it. He also calls Mary a Horny Little Devil, at which point the imaginations of several million viewers inadvertently go somewhere they never thought it would and they suffer a complete mental shutdown. And their ears start bleeding. With little pieces of brain in the blood. Luckily, those pieces of brain contain the memories of what Simon said, so society is able to continue functioning.

Next up! Aiden Grimshaw and His Incredibly Broad Shoulders. And Serial Killer faces, but that goes without saying. He’s performing Michael Jackson’s Thriller, so points for being one of the few songs genuinely on-theme tonight. But I hope you weren’t expecting Aiden to come out and surprise us with an upbeat performance, because he has decided to reinterpret Thriller as a slow, piano-driven number with the usual constipated-looking facial tics, taking all the life out of the song. Which is actually a genius move considering this is a song famed for its video featuring THE UNDEAD. My god, Aiden and Dannii are musical geniuses. It’s kinda weird, but not very good and as we go on in this competition I really think the only future for Aiden is as my personal sex slave. It should also be noted that Aiden and Dannii have the same hairstyle tonight. Judges! Louis liked it, probably because he wants to be fucked by Aiden. Cheryl advises Aiden to smile for a change, which he does, badly. Oh Aiden, I could find ways to make you smile. Cowell calls it bizarre and indulgent and Aiden shuffles off-stage after some awkward non-conversation with Dermot.

Oh good, it’s Belle Amie. I can’t help but notice that their intro video has lots of shots of them being touchy-feely and demonstrating close body contact and smiling and high-fiving and it is about as convincing as when they do the same thing for One Direction. It’s a rather deliberate attempt to persuade the audience that Belle Amie don’t all hate one another, which seems rather stupid. Oh producers, don’t you realise that we might begin to be interested in these girls if you just played up the fact that they hate one another and put razor blades in each other’s tampons? Such is the collective lack of interest in Belle Amie that even Excitable Voiceover Man forgets to cry out their name at the end of the intro video. What IS interesting though, is the Hotness (official group term) of topless guys on stage for this performance, which is just about enough to make it bearable. The girls are singing the Bananarama version of Venus, which I guess is Halloweeny because it is frequently used in ads for women’s shaving products, and hairy women are scary? Jesus, this performance is rather tuneless indeed. They’re not even trying to sing in harmony any more. This is just going to make their flawless autotuned harmony in the results show group song all the more hilarious looking. Judges! Louis wasn’t paying attention because he was distracted by the underwear-clad dancers. Dannii rightly criticises the vocals. Cheryl avoids commenting on the vocals. Simon lies through his teeth to try and make Belle Amie seem like the second most interesting thing to ever to happen to music, after One Direction.

Rebecca Ferguson! Who is wearing a witch’s hat during her conversation with the camera in the intro vid, which I kinda love her for. “When it comes from the judges” she says of last week’s praise for the Jessica Rabbit song, “you have to believe it”. Oh Rebecca, so naive. I wouldn’t trust Simon Cowell to tell me the truth if I was asking him right from left. Rebecca is doing Wicked Game, which fits the theme because the word Wicked is in the title and Wicked is also a musical featuring Witches, which are Halloweeny. See, figuring out the logic of X-Factor song selections in theme weeks is just a matter of word association! It is rather good and she doesn’t seem as awkward as usual. Cowell goes on to contradict me by saying she seemed nervous, but it is really just a cunning ploy for him to point out what a travesty it was that his girlfriend Treyc Arse was in the bottom two last week. But he is so impressed by Rebecca anyway that he invokes the hallowed name of Leona, the patron saint of reality TV talent, blessings be upon her.

Trey Cohen! She speculates in her drama video that the reason for being in the bottom two was because Whole Lotta Love was “a bit too old for the younger generation”. Anyone who uses the phrase “the younger generation” is instantly out of touch with said generation anyway, so Treyc is doomed. She lives in a house with Belle Amie and Bieber Squad, why doesn’t she just do a poll of them on what their favourite songs are and perform accordingly? Granted, she might have to sing the theme tune to Ben 10 as a result, but I’m sure we could work that into the Halloween theme as subtly as all these other non-Halloweeny songs. But I digress. Treyc and her Massive Arse will be performing Relight My Fire, because Take That did a cover of this song in the 90s, and Take That released tickets for their tour on Friday, and lots of websites buckled under the strain of the demand, and that upset some people, and dogs and cats can get upset by bangers and fireworks at Halloween, which is Halloweeny. Treyc starts the song lying “seductively” on a chaise-longue , and for a brief moment I imagine her ending the performance by lifting her legs into the air, holding a match between her booyliciousness and farting her way into a fiery finale, but alas while there are gouts of flame in the performance, none of them come from Treyc’s posterior. I’m going to email Brian Friedman this idea, however, as I think it could make for spectacular television, plus Treyc’s massive arse is the most interesting thing about her. Judges! Danni admires Treyc’s bravery but criticises her lack of a signature style, or something. Cowell says she has no connection with Cheryl, which makes Cheryl pissy. Treyc decides to respond to Dannii and says being able to do various styles makes her versatile. It is officially the bitchiest 4 minutes of the show this week.

We return with Matt Cardle. And his designer stubble. And... oh no... he’s taking on Bleeding Love. Simon will not like this. Nobody does Leona songs but St. Leona, dammit, because all Leona songs are bespoke compositions crafted for the angelic voice of Leona only, and no other performer can follow the ebb and flow of her hundred-times sanctified vocal acrobatics. Also, they will eventually let Matt sing a man’s song, yeah? Bleeding Love fits the theme because the song is about an emotional serial killer who inflicts metaphorical cuts, wounds and scarring to the sanguine heroine of the tale. Like a Mike Myers of the heart. Judges! Louis wasn’t crazy about it which ruins the chances of getting a blowie from Matt but he has to be honest, because truthfulness is what we watch this show for. Cheryl meanders about the point but ultimately decides Matt was having an off-week and Simon thinks nerves got the better of Matt but appreciates that he tried to do something different with the song. Somewhere, in a palace of pure crystal, Leona Lewis smirks to herself as she bathes in the blood of children who could have grown up to compete with her vocally.

WAGNER! WAGNER! WAAAAAAAAAAGNER! Louis informs us in the intro video that Wagner will be performing something that shows off his proper operatic voice. Which means Wagner, dressed as the love child of Freddie Mercury and the Phantom of the Opera, opening his medley with Oh Fortuna, which all reality TV show viewers will know as the piece used whenever producers want to add a bit of high-drama to proceedings, before segueing into Bat out of Hell. Let’s just say Meatloaf has nothing to fear just yet. There’s an amazing bit where the camera focuses on a genuinely astounded Simon Cowell. No one can resist the allure of Wagner, not even the embodiment of cynicism. I believe, with this performance, Wagner has actually redefined music as we know it. Nothing will ever be the same again. Judges! Loved it, with Dannii and Cheryl fighting over which one gets to fellate Wagner first, while Cowell just malfunctions and doesn’t know what to say at all. Louis encourages us to vote for Wagner because he just sang in two languages. I love Louis logic. Maybe that means Mary should do Amhrann na bhFiann next week.

Big Gay Paige is next. Singing Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. The Halloweeniness of this is obvious – in 100 years the default appearance for most depictions of witches will probably be based on either Amy Winehouse or Katie Waissel. This week, Paije does not look like the 80s have vomited on him, and is thus 80% less interesting. The 20% interesting comes from the fact that he has again decided to lie to his mother and change the lyrics of his song to refer to the opposite gender. Needless to say this necessitates a change to the “kept his dick wet” line to “She kept her head”. Oh Paije, your momma loves you for being you, and that won’t change when she learns you’re on the down low, dawg. Except... he doesn’t change the line saying “you go back to her” which means that he has now changed the song so he is singing to a lesbian he was having an affair with? Oh Paije, see what a tangled web you weave with your lyrical changes? Judges! None of them call him out on his LIES. They liked it. Despite the LIES.

Katie Waissel! The Empress of Evil was actually quite good last week, which is unsurprising given she was doing a number that was all about performance and jovial facade and if there is anyone on this show who can pretend to be something she isn’t it’s Our Katie. Katie is going to perform the Bewitched theme tune, which it turns out had lyrics. Who knew? The performance is quite like last week – a bit of a show and a not-terribly-demanding vocal. It is perfectly adequate but I’d be expecting more from Katie at this point given all the virgins she has sacrificed to the God of Fame Whores. Judges! Blah de blah de blah love blah.

Fuck it, it’s Bieber Squad. They actually sicken me, and it pains me to hear they’re alternately the favourites and second-favourites to win. The intro video is bizarre in that there’s no attempt to create drama nor is there any rabitting on about difficulties they’ve been having this week... it’s just Dannii and Simon talking about how great One Direction are while Inferior Bieber Clone talks about how much hard work they put in every week. The little bastards are singing Total Eclipse of the Heart. Is nothing sacred? If Bonnie Tyler was dead, she’d be turning in her grave. As it is, she probably just got an irritating itch somewhere awkward she couldn’t reach. Total Eclipse of the Heart suits the theme because... well, it doesn’t, but One Direction suit the theme because four of them are Bieber clones and one is a Muslim so obviously they have no souls. They’re all remarkably over-styled. It’s like the stylists even decide which side of their t-shirts will be tucked in to their belts and which bit will hang stylishly limp. I didn’t think it was possible, but I think this is an act that may even surpass Herr Waissell in terms of fakeness. Judges! Louis proves he’s still with it by mentioning Twilight. I bet he’s Team Jacob. He also says how everywhere he goes girls ask him to tell One Direction they love them. Which begs the question why is Louis Walsh hanging around with 14 year old girls? The judges are effusive in their praise, probably because Cowell has warned them that if One Direction don’t win he’ll kill them all. If, as seems likely, these fuckers make it all the way to the final, I think I’m going to gouge my eyes out and stick them in my ears.

Coveted Last Performance™ and a guaranteed place in next week’s show, because they only ever give the finale performance to someone who has been damn good in rehearsals, is Mini-Cheryl. She always seems like she’s on sedatives in her videos and this one is no different, as a Cher on relaxers promises us that she’s going to show us she can really sing. Which can mean only one thing: yep, the producer’s have allowed a contestant to step out of the niche they have imposed on them, and Cher is going to sing tonight rather than “rap”. They’ve reused the Throne of Winter from Aiden’s Mad World performance, and stuck a few twigs on it to turn it into the Throne of Autumn. Cher’s voice is very fragile/reed thin, so she’s not going to be troubling Goddess Leona any time soon, but it is still rather good, emotionally genuine and easily her best performance thus far. And the poor thing is in bits by the end. Quick! More sedatives! Presumably it is while Cher is under the influence of the cocktail of anti-depressants that Cheryl will sneak into her room and place her further in her thrall. The Judges loved it, and Cher bawls her way off-stage. I think I like her again, but if the producers think Cher is mentally up to the challenge of this show then I dread to think what Shirleena’s psychological evaluation was like to get her kicked off.

Results Show!

It’s a rather over-stuffed Results Show tonight, as we have Bon Jovi and his melted face, Jamiroquai and his futile attempt to be musically relevant, Princess Rhi-Rhi, and most terrifyingly of all, the group song. Actually. it seems that the group song and Bon Jovi’s performance have been smashed together to form some sort of horrifying guest act group song. Does that mean Bon Jovi isn’t singing live? Does it mean Bon Jovi is singing live but the contestants will do their usual autotuned miming? So many questions! Which are answered at the end of the performance when Dermot asks Wagner a question and it turns out his microphone isn’t even on. Although maybe that was just Wagner’s....

Jamiroquai! Is a prat and I’m not writing more than once sentence about him! I can however write about the song. Which is shit. Just like all his other songs. Which it also sounds like. And he also doesn’t want to shut up after the song ends and makes some noises about having had reservations about appearing. Probably considered himself too credible to appear, but in the end those 13 million people to promote your new single to just about outweighed your artistic integrity, didn’t they Jammy boy?

Next up, it’s everyone’s favourite victim of domestic violence, Rhianna. 25! MILLION! ALBUM! SALES! but all anyone will ever associate her with is a black eye and an umbrella. Rhi-Rhi sings live, which is nice of her, and a good tutorial for Cheryl Cole. Her backing dancers also DESTROY the place because their performance involves a food fight, and I do not envy the people who have the 3 minute ad-break to clear the stage. Then again they could always let Paige loose on it and I’m sure he’d have it all gobbled up in 90 seconds.

Bottom two are... Katie and Belle Amie! I wonder will Katie abandon the dark elder god Famewhoria and embrace Satanism instead, now that it is clear her tactics aren’t working. Belle Amie perform Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway. Which, like all other Belle Amie performances, is both mediocre and completely out of tune. Katie performs an Etta James song, which she is only okay at, and then collapses into a sobbing mess at the end. The sort of sobbing where you pull faces but don’t make actual tears, mind, and then proceed to wipe your eyes despite the lack of tears. Judges! Simon and Cheryl save their own acts, obviously. Danni decides to send Belle Amie home, and they look resigned to it, but then Louis the big drama queen decides to send Katie home, bringing us to the first DEADLOCK of the season. Dun dun dunnnnn. If Katie goes then there will be a bloodbath. She will literally tear through Britain in a frenzy of knives and blood-letting. To think, she gave up an actual record deal in order to appear on the X-Factor... The act with the lowest overall vote is... Belle Amie.

The X-Factor: Week Two

Welcome to the most boring episode of the X-Factor ever! “LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST WEEK!”, excited voiceover man (who I fucking love) bellows, before recapping all the stuff that you know happened because you were paying attention to your friends Facebook status updates. Dermhot tells us that our Saturday night starts right here, unless you’re watching it on TV3’s iPlayer, in which case your Saturday night starts on Monday evening.

The theme for this week is “Musical Heroes”, which is about as loose and vague as the themes tend to be at this early stage when they haven’t quite decided what to shoehorn each of the contestants as. Dermhot expects us to believe that the singers will be covering songs by their personal musical heroes. And if you believe that, then I urge you to never open an email purporting to be from a Nigerian prince.

On with the show! First up in this two and a half hour advert-fest, we have Storm Lee, performing Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. Upon hearing Storm’s song choice, alarm-bells immediately began to ring for me. This is a man already struggling with credibility (which is saying a lot on this show), and he’s going to sing a song that was lampooned, along with the entire concept of the reality TV show singing contest, by Peter Kay in spectacular fashion in Britain’s Got the Pop Factor not so long ago. “But”, I think to myself, “The X-Factor producers are canny individuals, coming as they do from the most devious, Machiavellian circle of Hell. Surely they would never be as stupid as to have Storm’s performance of this song revolve around him straddling a motorbike and rocking out?” Imagine my complete lack of surprise when Storm appears on-stage to perform something not unlike the first minute of this clip

The performance, already hindered by being nowhere near as epic as Geraldine’s memorable act (there’s no segue into Free Nelson Mandela, for one thing), is further hindered by being very karaoke. It is all a bit flat and uninspired and the smell of desperation wafting off of Storm is potent enough to be bottled and sold as Jordan’s next fragrance. Judges! Simon makes the very accurate point that Storm doesn’t so much come off as a rock-star as Louis Walsh’s vision of what a rock star is, which is probably the most succinct and apt summary of Storm Lee we’re going to get.

Massive Arse, and the large the growth attached to it, which I think we’ve decided to call “Treyc Cohen”, is next. Massive Arse is singing Purple Rain, which means that anyone other than the official X Factor UK channel on YouTube attempting to upload this performance will find themselves immediately sued by Prince Squiggle for 500,000 euros. Probably. It’s a good enough performance, if a little too glory-notey/shouty (I get the impression I’m going to be making this complaint about Arse Cohen fairly often...) but she’s no Ruth Lorenzo, dammit. Dannii Minogue calls Treyc petite. Clearly she’s never had to walk behind Treyc then. Simon loved it, of course. He concedes she lost the melody in parts but WHO CARES WHEN SHE CAN VOCALLY EXPLODE ON THOSE BIG NOTES, WOO!

Next up, we have Big Gay Paije. The Inevitable Attempt To Create Drama in Paije’s intro video is that he was sometimes out of breath in rehearsals. Because, they basically conclude in a much gentler manner- he’s a big fattie. Vocal Coach Evie Burnett’s solution is to plop Paije onto a treadmill to “increase his lung capacity”. Bless. Paije will be performing Alicia Key’s If I Ain’t Got You, clearly a very energetic song that requires lots of stamina and jumping around, like all of Alicia’s hi-octane, thumping hits. There are a couple of parts where it sounds like Paije has phlegm in his throat as he tries to glory note. Oh Cowell, you have so much to answer for with your big-note bias. Judges! Liked it. Mostly. Cowell has a rant about Friedman’s staging not being up to par or something, and it is at this point that I realise that most of Friedman’s choreography is actually meant to be good. Really? I thought it was meant to be terrible all the time, in a post-modern ironic way. Dannii tells Cowell that she thought the choreography was great and the audience erupt with applause. Because they’re fucking dance critics now.

Ah bollocks, the Bieber Squad. Can I not skip this part? I have decided they are my nemeses for this series. This is unfortunate as they’re probably going to make it all the way to the final. The Inevitable Attempt To Create Drama is to show us Curly Bieber getting a bit of a hurty tummy while rehearsing. Oh no! It’s stage fright! Will he get stage fright during the live performance? Let’s hope not! DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA CURLY-HEADED DRAMA! The boys come out to perform.... My Life Would Suck Without You... by their musical hero Kelly Clarkson? I see. Should their musical heroes not be JLS for reintroducing the concept of the boyband to an unsuspecting world? As I watch them sing, I am LITERALLY paralysed by not caring about whether or not Curly Bieber will vomit shit out his mouth from his stage-fright. Another reason I hate the Biebers: they do an awful lot of exuberant face-pulling to show how happy and loving it they are that’s about as genuine as Storm Lee’s rock-star credentials. The Irish one with the two-tone hair is particularly bad for it. Fuck off you little shits! The song is awful – I’ve rewatched it once or twice for scientific purposes, and it seems like the music is deliberately drowning out everyone bar Birth Mark On His Neck Bieber to mask the fact that they’re not particularly in tune. The performance ends and we’re treated to another round of arms-around-one-another fake chumminess from the boys. Judges! Louis points out that Kelly Clarkson is hardly their musical hero, an accusation that goes without answer.

Cher Lloyd is next. Doing Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life. Funny thing happens during this – they amp the music up during the singing bits, as they’re clearly scared that Cher can’t do anything outside her rap niche (Cher being one of the contestants who the producers definitely have shoehorned, and woe be upon her if she tries to escape) but from what I could hear she honestly didn’t seem that bad at the non-rap bits. Then again, it IS hard to tell when you have the backing vocals and music cranked up to 11. Judges! Dannii didn’t like it. Everyone else did. No one cares what Dannii thinks. Simon declares that he “sees the future” and artists like Cher are the future. Cowell’s clairvoyance must be a skill he only developed recently, given that he wasn’t able to avert Leon Jackson’s album flopping or prevent Gay Joe from winning over Easily Marketable Cheeky Chappy Chosen One Olly last year.

Mr Cellophane is next, performing something obscure I can’t be arsed looking up, because I don’t feel like expending the effort on someone who is going to be out within the next 3 weeks. Performance is good enough, in an OH MY GOD I FEEL THE EMOTION IN HIS VOICE, WHO IS HE AGAIN? sort of way. Judges! All loved it. Yawn.

Next stop on the boredom express; Diva Fever! Singing... Barbra Streisand? This is, without a doubt, the worst song choice in the history of the show. I know we’re not meant to take Diva Fever seriously, but honestly Cowell, surely you could have extended your thought process a little deeper than “Hmm... they’re gay! The song is called Barbra Streisand! PERFECT!” Mistake number 2 is letting the Diva who can’t sing take most of the... well, to say vocals is a stretch. Let’s just say he takes most of the wailing and monicker-calling and even that much is pushing his abilities a wee bit. The choreography is also the gayest thing to ever happen on the X-Factor stage, which considering that Louis Walsh, Joe McElderry and Brian Friedman have all stood there, is saying something. Judges! There’s another bit, just like last week, where Louis tries to make a joke that falls completely flat and there’s an awkward silence. I hope this is a weekly occurrence. Maybe we’ll get a prize if we can remember which acts Louis’ lead balloons follow.

This show is painfully boring this week. I demand more spectacle and more ridiculousness from now on. And I want them adhere to the theme strictly, locking the contestants into doing something they don’t want to do. I want to see Katie Waissell come on stage dressed as a drum for a performance of My Chemical Romance’s Black Parade during Rock Week, watch the Biebers soar to new lyrical heights on Suicide is Painless for TV Theme Tunes week and see Mary Byrne become a hot mess to cover Take it Off for Kesha week.

Rebecca Ferguson! Singing Feeling Good. Her drama this week is that she can’t stick her tits out to seem sexy enough for her performance (which is ironic considering she has two kids at 20 but I guess there’s a difference between being sexy and being easy), or something. I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention because I was so fucking bored. She’s alright but a bit reserved. There’s something hard to put your finger on that stops it being a memorable performance; maybe it is actually a confidence thing like the judges keep saying. But then again that would mean they’re right about something and I refuse to countenance that.

Aiden Grimshaw and his Broad Shoulders, Dreamy Eyes and Serial Killer Facial Expressions are up next, singing John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. It’s kinda painful. He’s all over the place and his facial expressions aren’t so much I Am Going To Eat Your Brain With Fava Beans this week as I Am Puppy Who Has Been Kicked Please Hug Me, as he realises it’s going disastrously wrong. Dannii’s face as Aiden grinds to a squawking conclusion says it all. She looks something like this:

Other judges! For some reason, Louis loved it. I think I have some competition in the Aiden-crush stakes. Hiss. Cheryl and Simon are aware of how shit it was and say as much. Simon puts it down to nerves, which means we’re definitely getting an I-Have-To-Overcome-My-Nerves/I-Need-To-Prove-Myself-This-Week intro video for Aiden next week, then.

As if I wasn’t excited enough after getting Aiden in a suit, next up we have Wagner. Wagner’s intro video is an origin story – it explains how Wagner always loved to sing, but he was drawn to KARATE, because, as he puts it “I wanted to be an awesome fighter” (this is backed up with a picture of Karate Action Wagner roundhouse kicking Chuck Norris into orbit). Then, apropos of nothing, we are shown a picture of a topless Wagner holding a lion by the tail. I think the lion might represent the sheer unstoppable masculinity of Wagner. “I think I wasted my life without singing, and so I decided to sing.” Wagner informs us, with a saucy wink. You could substitute “singing” for just about any other activity and I bet Wagner would excel at it. Oh lord. I love the way overexcited voiceover man says VAAAAAGNER! I want it as my text message noise.

Nothing can describe this scene in all its glory, but I’ll try: Wagner. In a dinner jacket. With no shirt. Just rippling Wagner chest. Singing Tom Jones’s Help Yourself. Needless to say, there are a bevy of Wagnettes on stage cavorting flirtatiously with The Majestic One. They’re not acting. They’ve just fallen under his spell. A bunch of male Wagnettes appear on-stage to let us know that Wagner has enough lovin’ for both genders. It makes sense really. It would be a crime for Wagner to deprive anyone of the opportunity to sleep with him. The performance drives the dancers into such a hedonistic frenzy that at the end the men are groping the women’s boobies outrageously. Judges! Embrace the madness that is Wagner. “Are you getting it on with Mary?” Cowell asks, ignorant of the fact that Wagner could never give his heart to just one woman.

Ah! Sly X-Factor producers! Knowing that the audience will be so worked up into a euphoric daze following Wagner’s performance, they put Katie Waissel on next, so that we associate her with the release of the endorphins from the post-Wagner orgasm. You can’t fool me! The intro video tells us that Katie used to perform to Care Bears in her bedroom. I refuse to believe that. Were bears, maybe. But I cannot believe that the Empress of Evil ever owned Care Bears. Unless she scratched the symbols off their stomachs and replaced it with things like the Biohazard symbol, or a swastika. Hell, I have trouble believing Katie was ever a child. I think she just tumbled out of her mother fully formed following some Faustian pact, and immediately set about trying to become famous to fill the void where her soul should be. Katie is performing some Etta James song. She’s fairly good, but don’t let that fool you. She’d destroy you and send your loved ones to Hell in an instant if she thought it would get her a positive headline. Judges! Louis and Dannii both take credit for saving her. Don’t remind me, you two.

Oh vomit. It’s Belle Amie. They’re singing You Really Got Me by their musical heroes, The Kinks. *cough* It isn’t as awful as last week, but it’s still pretty awful. And they’re still really out of tune. If only they had penises and Bieber fringes and were called One Direction, then none of that would matter! I can’t pay attention to the performance, because I’m distracted by the backing dancer pretending to play the guitar and doing an utterly unconvincing job of it. But I’m going to take a wild guess and say that their performance consisted mostly of strutting about trying to look sassy while batting heavily made up eyelids at the camera.

Mary Byrne from Tesco, Ireland, is next. “Junno when yehr on a rollercoaster, and yehr nervous ? And yeh come to the end and yeh go “OH MY GOD THAT WAS BRILLIANT! And yeh get off and yehr shakin’? Magnify dat 60,000 times! Cos that’s the feeling yeh get.” It’s impossible to know for sure whether Mary is talking about the reaction she got last week, or what it feels like to fuck Wagner. Mary is singing You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me. As with last week, it’s pretty flawless, but maybe I’m blinded by my patriotism for Tesco. She gets another rapturous applause that goes on forever, and the producers are probably pissed off because if that continues every week they might have to drop one of the 78 ad breaks.

Matt Cardle’s hat is in the washing machine this week, as he performs Just the Way You Are. So, after an intro video that tells us that Matt likes Nirvana, we’re supposed to believe that his musical hero is... Bruno Mars. Who released his debut single this year. Mkah, X-Factor. I totally buy it. We attempt to wring some drama out of the fact that he’s going to chance a note that only Mariah Carey and Kurt from Glee are capable of hitting but we all know he’s going to do it because they wouldn’t have put him on in the coveted last performance slot if he hadn’t already done it fifty times in rehearsal. Anyway, he’s pretty good, aside from one or two shaky bits and I’m sure he melted a few hearts in the process (and shattered a few windows) and further cemented his place as favourite.

Results Show!

I really appreciate that they’ve stopped doing that ridiculous thing they did last year where they’d make the contestants wear the same clothes they were wearing during the previous night’s show. I’m sure it would’ve been difficult for Katie Waissel to perform that ballad in her sing-off last week if she’d still been wearing that virtual reality headset from the future.

Oh fuck, the group performance. Since they introduced the concept of the Group Performance last year, there has never actually been a good one. Tonight, performing Telephone... that doesn’t change. Everyone does that thing where they hold the microphone diagonally upwards to obscure their mouths so you can’t tell they’re all miming the group song. It doesn’t help already shaky illusion when John Adeleye takes the microphone away and stops moving his lips while somehow managing to bellow “Cos I’ll be dancing!” We also know that it’s been autotuned to fuck because Belle Amie are completely in tune.

Moving swiftly onwards, we get performances from Diana Vickers (meh) and Katie Perry (meh) before the results (yay!): Storm Lee is unceremoniously ejected. He reminds us all to follow our dreams so that someday we can be 40-something wannabes kicked out of talent shows in the second week. This leaves Belle Amie and Diva Fever as our bottom two. Wow, this is going to be nail bitingly unpredictable. Diva Fever perform I Will Survive, showing that they understand irony at least. Belle Amie perform Big Girls Don’t Cry, by Herpie... sorry, Fergie. They’re better than normal, which is to say that they’re almost in tune. Big surprise, the judges save Belle Amie. I predict that they’ll either go next week, or avoid the bottom placing completely next week, and then go the following week. Or they’ll murder one another fighting over who gets to sing lead vocals. Whichever way it goes, the viewers win!

The X-Factor: Week One

And so it begins, from now until Xmas, another marathon of clever edits, leaks to the press, tears, tantrums and dubious themed weeks. Yay, the X-Factor is back to destroy music!

We open with DermHot revealing the worst kept secret in showbiz – the wildcards. To absolutely no one’s surprise, they are: Brazilian sex god Wagner, two-time reject Treyc, Blackpool homosexuals Diva Fever and Big Gay Paije. The scenes of Diva Fever being “surprised” by the news of their return to the show are made more hilarious by the bathhouse (the official group noun for homosexuals) of gays who fling themselves at them in a mixture of celebration and desperation to be on television for 3 seconds.

DermHot informs us that from now on we’ll be able to download the artist’s performances from iTunes every week after the show. I’m amazed that after 7 years they’re still finding ways to wring even more revenue out of this programme.

First up, we have FYD. Your chances of staying on the show are never good when you’re the first to perform on the very first show, and are presumably even worse when you’re the first to perform on a two and a half hour extravaganza. Your chances of staying on the show are at their absolutely lowest when you’re a group doing all those things. Fighting their fate, FYD sing Billionaire, one of those annoying songs where someone who isn’t particularly well known sings about being some sort of jet-set superstar with thousands of adoring fans and a huge back catalogue of hits despite being completely unknown. A fairly bog-standard performance; not particularly inspiring or memorable. Judges! Cheryl seems determined to say something positive about everyone tonight in order to reclaim her status as nation’s sweetheart following her role in single-handedly banishing Gamu Nenghu from Britain, so she applauds FYD on their singing and dancing, because it is hard to do two things at once.

Second performance! Matt Cardle the painter with the stupid hat and the incredibly emotive voice. But not as emotive as Gamu's. She made Louis cry. WE WILL REMEMBER. It is surprising that bookie’s favourite Matt is on so early. I guess they reckon they don’t have to place artists strategically until after the first few weeks. Matt sings... When Love Takes Over, originally by Kelly Rowland featuring David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland featuring David Guetta. I'ts pretty good. Original, anyway, and he gets to be all competent with his voice and whatnot. Not the most charismatic performer though, as he awkwardly struggles around with his mic stand. Expect another few weeks of Matt intro videos going on about opening his eyes with exasperated comments from Brian Friedman about “connecting” with the audience.

Next up: Mr. Celophane. Or John Adeleye, as he is also known. His intro video makes a few noises about knowing he’s not the most memorable person in the competition and blah blah blah... so he comes out and sings One Sweet Day, one of the most predictable music competition show choices there is. In contrast to Dannii’s inspired song choice for Cardle, this is just the usual boring selection from Louis. Completely unremarkable and forgettable. Judges! Cheryl continues being nice in order to get us to love her again. She has a new album out in a few weeks and it isn’t going to shift otherwise! Simon and Louis have a spat over whether One Sweet Day was number one or not.

Rebecca Ferguson, the Compulsory Single Mother Contestant, is up next performing Teardrops. It is... middling. She’s nice and all... as a person. But the song is blah and doesn’t really suit her interesting voice (I mean that in a nice way) and is just completely lacking personality. She’s basically what happens when you take Stacey Solomon and take away the things that made her interesting like Judaism and mild retardation.

After John and Rebecca sent us all to sleep, we need something attention grabbing to wake us up and... Christ on a bike... it’s Storm Lee. Whose hair has been dyed red to symbolise his rising from the ashes like a Phoenix to be given his second chance. For someone so inherently ridiculous, he takes himself awfully seriously. He’s singing We Built This City on Rock and Roll, a song I cannot hear without thinking of Homer Simpson. Which is apt given how much of a cartoon character “Storm” is. Also: as an X-Men fan I resent having to type a capitalised version of the word storm without it referring to Ororo Monroe. Storm is fairly limp vocally and the “performance”, which involves Mild Shower dropping from a raised platform into the waiting arms of a bunch of dancers dressed as zombie gimp bank robbers, reveals the slight exaggeration from his intro video where he said he’d be “falling 15 feet from a plank”. Judges! Louis does one of his patented Cringe-Inducing Behaviours by reminding viewers in Scotland that STORM LEE IS SCOTTISH AND THEY SHOULD VOTE FOR HIM OUT OF BLIND PATRIOTISM AND NOT EVALUATE HIM BASED ON TALENT AND VOTE ACCORDINGLY BECAUSE LOUIS IS THAT DESPERATE TO STAY IN THE COMPETITION SO VOTE NOW SCOTLAND OR YOU’LL BE COMMITTING TREASON.

Next up we have Belle Amie, the hastily formed girl group named after Louis Walsh’s favourite Eastern European porn site. They’re doing Airplanes, that boring song by B.O.B. and that twat from Paramore. And they somehow manage to make it even worse, with a completely out-of-tune and disharmonious performance. The X-Factor run of abysmal girl groups continues unabated. At least Husstle had the girl with the brilliant mohawk. Belle Amie are so going tomorrow or next week. Judges! Make delusional comments about Belle Amie having a great image (they’re wearing clothes that even Cheryl Cole wouldn’t be seen in) and there being a gap in the market for a group like them. Yes, people are definitely clamouring for 4 girls who can’t sing in tune.

Mini-Cheryl is next. Singing... well, okay, singing is pushing it. There is rapping and some frail singing and... well, I want to like Cher for some reason, but she’s clearly only capable of doing one thing and that isn’t going to get her far when we get to themed weeks like 80s Power Ballads With 15 Second Long Glory Notes At The End Because Glory Notes Make Simon Horny. Unless she’s saved by a timely onset of the Diana Vickers strain of tonsillitis before a tricky theme week. Also, for someone who newspapers would have us believe is “fragile” and “falling apart” she seems confident enough. The judges are rather effusive in their praise, perhaps a little too much, but I guess the producers have demanded such in the wake of Gamugate.

Diva Fever. Only one of whom actually seems to sing. Only one of whom seems to appear onscreen actually. The camera blatantly ignores the chunkier one. They’re abysmal, and I have NO IDEA what is going on with the ill advised costume change halfway through. So bad it almost makes me wish for the good old days of Same Difference. Almost.

Big Gay Paije is next. Singing Killing Me Softly... with her song? Gender changed lyrics? Bwahahaha! Who do they think they’re kidding? He’s also wearing what appears to be everything that went wrong fashion-wise in the 1980s vomited onto to his considerable frame. I don’t know what the stylists are on tonight but it was clearly either past the sell by date or cut with too much rat poison. There’s a hilarious bit where he skips/stomps/lunges around the stage to the back of the judges and runs of breath mid-lyric.

Next up is Rita Repulsa, aka Katie Waissel. Katie looks sort of like a post-apocalyptic Artemis. I guess emulating the Goddess of the Hunt is pretty apt for someone chasing fame so intensely. Katie is doing Queen’s We Are the Champions, the song favoured by drunken sports fans worldwide. Not particularly difficult to sing, Katie does a serviceable if unspectacular job. The camera pans overhead at one point, revealing that Katie is limply moving her hands about the keyboard pretending to play, shattering the delusions of the 3 people who actually believed she was. DermHot asks her about her difficult week and she mutters something stupid while psionically absorbing the fame energy she needs to survive.

Big Mary Byrne is next. Did you know that she used to work on the checkout in Tesco? Did you? Well, she did. SHE DID. I know she’s never mentioned it before, but honestly, she did. They’ve changed Mary’s makeover shots and are no longer using the Dawn French ones. This disappoints me greatly. Mary performs This Is a Man’s World, and it’s pretty flawless. She gets a massive reaction, and it’s all very touching and emotional. Louis somehow manages to resist screaming EVERYONE IN IRELAND VOTE FOR MARY, possibly because he knows that after about 3 years of being unable to take part in the voting, the Republic doesn’t need any extra encouragement to exercise its newly reinstated franchise in what has been described as the biggest step forward in Anglo-Irish relations since the Good Friday Agreement.

Nicolo Festa and his intro video of judgemental stares, which all give the impression that if he ever deigned to notice you, it’d only be for long enough to deliver a crippling put-down. He’s doing Lady Gaga’s Just Dance, and alas, it doesn’t really work. Louis makes a joke about working with 3 divas that goes down like a lead balloon and is followed by 5 seconds of awkward silence. Fuck off, Louis. Cheryl Cole actually says something negative for the first time this evening, presumably having momentarily forgotten that Promise This is available to download on October 24^th. Mark it in your diary, folks, and then download something else instead.

We have the Bieber Squad now, aka One Direction. The intro video tries to create some drama (as the intro videos always do, by pointing out some failing, such as a throat infection, forgetting the lyrics, or inability to “connect” that the performer has had in rehearsal that could DESTROY EVERYTHING if repeated in the live show) by telling us that Zain, the stroppy one who refused to dance at Boot Camp, got his timing wrong in rehearsal. The boys perform Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and they clearly didn’t have to worry about Zain getting his timing wrong because not one of them is in tune with the other. The cacophony of disharmony ends with the audience’s ears bleeding and Simon applauding One Direction for being so current and relevant.

WAGNER. The Brazilian Sex God performs a medley of She Bangs and Love Shack. You just know that at some point in his life, Wagner has been to a gentleman’s club called The Love Shack. Initially I reckoned that it was remembering the girls of The Love Shack that was fuelling Wagner’s unbridled sexual magnetism, but then I realised that no, it was all just pure Wagner. Such is the raw sexual dynamism on display that by the end of his performance, Wagner’s backing dancers have been impregnated through sheer proximity to the heaving mass of masculinity that is this Brazilian beast. There are bongos at one point. Wagner plays the bongos. I don’t care what the judges say, because Wagner was amazing and that is an objective, measurable fact.

The last of the boys: Aiden Grimshaw and his Amazingly Broad Shoulders. I’m just going to get this bit out of the way: I so would. After Wagner, obviously. Aiden sings Mad World in the style of Gary Jules. Despite his odd little jerky physical ticks and the ugly snarly faces he makes while singing, it’s pretty damn good. His performance consists of sitting upon what can only be described as The Throne of Winter, then getting up and staring intensely into the camera. Where does Brian Friedman get such creativity from? Sitting down and then standing up? Amazing.

Finishing the show, we have Treyc Cohen, who I don’t care about because she isn’t Gamu. She does U2’s One by way of the Mary J Blige cover version. The camera pans behind her and sweet Christmas, that is one massive arse. If you combined her arse with Aiden’s shoulders you’d get some sort of... 8 foot tall giant arse shoulder monster. The vocals aren’t perfect, but she hits the glory note at the end and that’s all Simon Cowell ever cares about in a performance from a woman so he decides that she was the best singer of the night. Er, where were you when Wagner was creating a modern fertility ritual on those bongos, Cowell?

Tomorrow Night: Double ejection! Bye bye Belle Amie, John or FYD!