X-Factor: The Final - Part Two

PREVIOUSLY: Cast your mind back, so long ago, to the first part of the very drawn out finale to the X-Factor 2010, when the following events may or may not have happened: Cher Lloyd went home and didn’t have a massive diva-strop on-stage thanks to the influence of powerful horse tranquilisers! Rihanna and Christina Aguilera literally tried to outstrip one another! Robbie Williams appeared on the show for the fifteen millionth time! Outside broadcasts from the contestants’ home towns made us lose the will to live because I don’t think any of us give a fuck what Melanie the hairdresser who once walked within two feet of Rebecca’s nan thinks about her chances of winning! Katie Waissel held the producers hostage with a shotgun and a demand for another wildcard round giving former contestants the right to a place in the final two!

LAST NIGHT, THE FINALISTS GAVE THE PERFORMANCES OF THEIR LIVES, Voiceover Man booms. NOW, FROM THOUSANDS JUST THREE REMAIN! Yes, I do have to retype everything he said. He completes me, and I’m not going to hear his voice again until August. Or until the next tongue-in-cheek E4 advert. We’re reminded that tonight, one of the 3 remaining finalists will win the X Factor and with it, a life-changing record deal. Life changing in the sense that they’ll get an Xmas number one (unless you’re Joe McElderry, in which case expect a campaign to get a song by a different act from the same global music conglomerate to number one, because showing Simon Cowell his influence is so powerful that he can inspire people to push a song to the top of the charts that would otherwise never have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it there is really going to show him who’s boss, isn’t it?) a less successful follow-up single and a mediocre album. For the last time, Voiceover Man reminds us that IT’S TIME. TO FACE. THE MUNICH!

We begin with... oh balls, a group performance. At least it’s only our three finalists and at least they’re actually singing live. We’re treated to Take That’s Never Forget. You will be shocked and amazed to learn that this segues into an appearance from Take That themselves, in what must be their 48^th appearance this month. Just in case you were starting to get bored of Take That, what with the fact that they are literally never off our TV screens these days with appearances on Strictly Come Dancing, any chat-show on after 8pm, and even their own bloody documentaries (such as David Attenborough’s Emmy nominated series on the mating rituals of the Mark Owen after 15 pints and a bottle of vodka), they’ve decided to shake things up by letting one of the ones who never sings take the lead. I think his name is Howard or Jason, but I’m not sure which one, so let’s just call him Howson. Howson does an admirable job of making himself noticed for the first time in 20 years, but Robbie Williams doesn’t take too kindly to having the spotlight diluted so he makes sure that he bleats out his parts as loudly as possible, sounding something like a sheep being raped with a chainsaw. Just in case we hadn’t noticed Robbie enough, he shows up another 24 times in the recap of last night’s performances, desperately trying to sup from the cup of One Direction’s fame like a showbiz vampire.

We have to endure another round of cover versions before the first elimination and then the winner’s songs, and Matt Cardle is up first, with Katy Perry’s Firework. Matt singing a woman’s song? Nice to see them doing something different in the final show. At no point in the performance does Matt wear a bra that fires sparkles into the air, which I guess is something we can all be thankful for. Boom boom boom falsetto boom. His performance is less manic than the one Perry herself gave us a few weeks ago, and his desperation to win is much less grating than her desperation to be noticed and given a judging role on the forthcoming televisual apocalypse that will be the American X-Factor. It isn’t as flawless as several of his other performances, but that’s the stubborn Waissel strain of tonsillitis for you. JUDGES! Louis and his ever-darkening hair say that Dannii and Matt have done a great job. Funny, I didn’t see Ms Minogue up on stage painfully squawking through ever tightening vocal chords for the past 3 weeks. Cheryl says something dense and Simon would prefer if Matt wasn’t wearing neon trousers. We travel via the magic of television to Essex where Stacey Solomon talks to woman who made a pizza that looks like Matt (but doesn’t really). And they say TV is dumbing down.

Fresh from the Disney cloning vats, it’s One Direction! In their intro-video, Curly Headed Bieber explains that if they won, their lives would change forever, and they’re ready for that. Yes, with an average age of about 16 and three-quarters, Bieber Squad have already lived through enough hard times to want out, and if they don’t get that through the X-Factor then they’re going to get it from the barrel of a gun. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you want Bieber Squad to escape their world-weariness with 5 bullets? Do you? That would be like seeing 5 Andrex puppies sitting in a basket in the middle of a motorway and not doing anything to save them from an oncoming truck. Don’t save one life this Christmas. Save five. Vote One Dimension. Tonight, the boys are murdering Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn, which has many layers of meaning for them as it was the first song they performed after being cynically put together as a band by the producers. Okay, that’s one layer of meaning. It actually isn’t a terrible performance. It’s completely in tune for one thing, and I think they even manage to avoid any bum notes tonight. Curly Headed Bieber and Superior Bieber take lead, as ever; Muslim Bieber continues in his established role as the human echo; Inferior Bieber pulls faces in the desperate hope that someone will notice he exists, and Irish Bieber stares into the camera with the cold, dead eyes of a serial sex offender. JUDGES! Louis does the thing Louis always does, where he just basically states material facts of reality: You’re One Direction. You’re five boys. You’re a boyband. You have Y chromosomes. You’re in the final. You could win. I’m Louis Walsh. Fuck me hard. Dannii expresses her belief that the boys will have a career whatever happens, as does Cheryl. Simon says the boys should win because they’d give us something we’ve never seen before. He’s right. We’ve never seen 5 young men sing together before. Except for when Take That did it 10 minutes ago. Or when The Wanted did it 3 episodes ago.

Rebeccabot expresses her amazement at being in the final. And not much else. It’s a really, really short intro video. She probably needed the extra time to sit in her regeneration alcove absorbing electricity. This is the final, after all; she’ll need the extra juice. Rebecca is singing Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), because since upgrading her Operating System, she has begun to experience the randomness of what it is like to dream. Like the other night, not long after she entered hibernation mode, she saw the usual string of Ones and Zeroes but could swear that at several points she saw the number two. On the strength of this performance, it seems a pity that Rebeccabot decided to play it safe(mode) for so long with twee balladry, because she completely knocks this one out of the park. Which is easy when you have a pneumatic, motorised, reinforced titanium skeleton, but still. The dancers are wearing binbags and I think the aesthetic is probably inspired by the apocalyptic future that Rebecca comes from. JUDGES! Louis goes insane and practically begs us to vote for Rebecca. Dannii says it was a fantastic performance and Simon compliments Cheryl on the song choice. Cheryl smiles stupidly and tries to remember if she’s wearing any underwear.

IT’S TIME! TO WATCH! SOME FILLER! We get about five minutes of footage from the audition stages, all of which we have seen countless times before, over and over and over. But just in case you’d forgotten, all your favourites are there: Michael Jackson, Stonehenge Hippie Granny and her long grey hair, that prostitute they sent to Boot Camp, the guy who fell trying to hug Cheryl, the Wicked Witch, the unforgettable Gay And Straight, the Aul Wan in the Blonde Wig who did Pink’s So What, and of course, the pair of teletubbies who started punching one another on-stage. This all leads, inevitably, to most of these rejects making an appearance live in studio performing Bad Romance, concluding with Chavstitute, dressed in Ann Summers’ cheapest dominatrix outfit, descending from the ceiling in a pair of lips trying her best to belt out the chorus and failing miserably.

The voting lines are frozen and we prepare to say goodbye to either Rebeccabot, Matt or Fuckwits United. Dermot wishes all the finalists the best of luck and then proceeds to wait around 40 seconds before announcing that Matt is through. Matt does that annoying fist-biting thing and runs excitedly off-stage. Dermot then announces Rebecca is safe, and we get the absolute highlight of the series as five teenage faces sink in the sort of utter dismay that can only mean one thing: they totally thought they were going to ace it. Crestfallen visages watch as the montage of One Direction’s best bits goes by. Well, four crestfallen faces do. Niall looks more like he’s just realised he left his sketchbook of drawings of Victorian-era European Royalty fucking wallabies with knives in plain sight in their dressing room and desperately wants to get there before anyone else does.

We’re in the home stretch people. It’s time. TO FACE. THE WINNER’S SONGS. Matt’s is a cover version of Biffy Clyro’s Many of Horror, because Simon Cowell actually wants to antagonise the demographic that put Killing in the Name to number one last year. They’ve changed the title to When We Collide, because we can’t have a potential Xmas number one with the word horror in its name. The primary difference between Biffy’s original and Matt’s version is the loss of Simon Neil’s always puzzling mid-Atlantic drawl (always puzzling because he’s Scottish) and the inevitable addition of some high notes. It isn’t the musical abomination many outraged Biffy fans would have you believe – just a straight up cover version by a guy with a decent enough voice with no emotional connection to the song. Measured evaluation not being the Judges’ strong point, they laud it as though it is Matt’s best performance of the entire series, when it is clearly about seven hundred kilometres away from being such a thing. We get some further padding in the shape of a retrospective on Matt’s “journey”, because if it is one thing the X-Factor editors (and indeed all reality tv show editors) love, it’s showing us footage of contestants journeys. Look, there’s Matt singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face at boot camp. And look, there’s Matt singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face in November. Hasn’t he come so far?

Rebeccabot will be drawing the competitive stage of X-Factor 2010 to a close, with her cover version of Duffy’s Distant Dreamer. That’s certainly one way to make Rebecca a more exciting, relevant singer – have her do a cover of a song by what must be one of the most vibrant, colourful and exhilarating acts of the last 5 years. Oh. Wait. Rebecca looks stunning, probably because she’s aware she’ll have to return to the future soon and wants to look her best for her reunion with Data, Alpha 5, the T-800 and the other members of the Android Collective dedicated to saving us from that dreadful future depicted in that documentary, The Matrix. The performance is nice, just like Rebecca’s dress, Rebecca’s hair and Rebecca herself. I could never see anyone in the world excitedly remarking “I simply cannot wait for the Rebecca Ferguson album”. Actually, I can’t see anyone ever saying that about a Matt Cardle album either. Oh well. JUDGES! Louis pleads for Rebecca one last time, Dannii turns her critique into a statement on Matt, Cowell liked it and Cheryl Cole is a moron. We then have to sit through the story of Rebecca’s journey, which omits the interesting stuff like the struggle of the resistance leaders in the year 2145 to steal the prototype Rebeccabot from Robotnik and send it back in time. The story of Rebeccabot reduces her to tears, proving that even an android can cry. Cheryl says that she really can’t say enough about Rebecca, because she wasn’t aware Bex existed until almost 24 hours ago when Cher got the boot. We head to adverts with a promise from Dermot of a very special guest act...

Which turns out to be Take That. Again. Performing The Flood. Again. That’s right, the celebrity performer for the absolute, honest to goodness last episode of this series of the X-Factor is a band we’ve already seen about 4 times this year, performing the same song they did on the results show broadcast on November 14^th. I can only conclude that a very special guest star was booked and then murdered by Katie Waissel in one last desperate attempt to ruin the show and prevent anyone other than herself being crowned champion. Their new album is the fastest selling record of the century, Dermot announces, asininely. It’s the space year 2010, O’Leary. That sort of hyperbole stopped meaning anything ten years ago. Performance over, Robbie Williams enters attention-seeking mode; he starts chanting for “Wagner”, runs around the stage disrobing, then places a firework between his arse-cheeks and does a backflip as it goes off. On the Williams’ scale of public irritation, it registers 5.5 Rudeboxes.

RESULTS TIME! At fucking last. The lights dim. The audience quietens. The fingers of hundreds of Biffy Clyro fans hover over their keyboards, waiting to register their disgust. “The winner of the X-Factor 2010, is...” Dermot says, at 1 hour, 28 minutes and 40 seconds into the show. At 1 hour, 28 minutes and 58 seconds, Dermot announces that Matt has won. Rebecca and her mine-shaped jewellery hug Matt and offer congratulations. Cheryl briefly wonders which of the acts on-stage is hers and if this means she’s won again. Dannii kicks Cheryl in the vagina, universally acknowledged as the only way to inform someone that their hat-trick has been denied. Danni is thrilled – Matt is her big beefy apology to the world for Leon Jackson, after all. Matt is obliged to sing When We Collide again, just to make those Biffy fans mentioned earlier write their letters of disgust to NME even more furiously. The former contestants join him on-stage, and he starts to sob when my boyfriend Aiden throws his arms around him. It better be platonic, is all I’m saying. We get the hilarious moment where Matt punches Dannii, which I watch again and again, pretending that it’s Cheryl Cole instead. And then, just like that, after all the tears, tantrums, Brazilian sex gods and the Irish Shirley Basseys who loved them, chavtastic wannabe Feminems, product placement for Sony Music artists, failed attempts at manipulating public sentiment and more appearances by Robbie Williams than any TV show should be capable of withstanding, it is over.

X-Factor: The Final - Part One

And so, after interminable auditions, the farce of Judges’ Houses and 10 long weeks of producers’ attempts at manipulating public opinion to favour chosen contestants to absolutely no avail, Excitable Voiceover Man dramatically informs us that for one last time, IT’S TIME TO (DE)FACE THE MUSIC!!!!! Well, second-last. Given that this is the first of a two-day, four hour extravaganza of musical mayhem. Heaven help our eardrums.

Our finale opens with all 16 finalists singing What a Feeling and to be honest, the less said about it the better. I was secretly hoping that it would end with Gamu descending from the ceiling wearing fuzzy angel wings to belt out the chorus. As it is, we get our 12 rejects lip-synching while the 4 remaining contestants sing live. Well, 3 of them sing. Cher Lloyd raps with her usual modern, relevant, contemporary aplomb.

Our first performance is from Matt, whose intro video is an INCREDIBLY LONG EPIC TALE of his journey home to see friends and family. We’re meant to find Matt’s reunion with Mammy Matt all emotional, because the producers think we have the attention span of a gnat and can’t remember that in last week’s intro video they told/showed us Mammy Matt looking after him while he had his hurty throat. But I digress. Matt and his father share an emotional moment in the only way heterosexual men can: by punching one another in the shoulders and trying to pretend they’re not sobbing. Extremely long VT over, Matt launches into Dido’s Here with Me. Insane Friedman Staging Alert: Matt is accompanied by a bunch of violinists wearing white veils. I think the performance is intended as a pseudo-sequel to the Wagner’s marriage performances: the women in white are mourning Lady Wagner after she took her own life following her rejection by the Brazilian sex-pest. The song is decent enough, though Matt has performed better before. JUDGES! Louis tells Matt that he deserves to be in the final. Cheryl says she always knew Matt was going to be in the final because the god Apollo gifted her with the power of foresight. Simon, the one who said last week that he was sick of contestants using sickness to get sympathy, informs us that Matt is still somewhat sick but sounded great despite it. Dermot takes us live to Matt’s hometown of Essex, where technical difficulties mean we can hear Stacey Solomon but not see her. Knowing Stacey, those technical difficulties probably mean she was facing the wrong way.

Next up is Rebeccabot. Rebecca’s emotional AND EPIC journey home is somewhat difficult to follow, as the storm of Liverpudlian accents featured in it means that it mostly comes across as a lot of high-pitched squealing audible only to other Liverpudlians and dolphins. Rebecca returns home to visit her inventor, famed scientist Dr. Ivo Robotnik, who urges the voting public to support Rebecca and email him the last known location of Sonic the Hedgehog. Highlight of the clip: Rebecca sitting with her children, her son seemingly fascinated by the lustrous blonde locks of a Barbie. He’s going to be an X-Factor fan when he’s older. Rebecca is singing Corinne Bailey Raye’s Like a Star from atop the often seen Podium of Performance that they like to have the contestants stand on sometimes for no particularly good reason. Halfway through some dancers grab the Podium of Performance and start rotating it. This causes the audience to burst out with slight applause, presumably because they’re amazed at the spectacle of Rebecca actually moving, even if it’s only because other people are actually moving her. JUDGES! Louis loves Rebecca and wants her to win and tells her she deserves to be in the final, because she’s lovely (which she is, but he leaves out the part about her being SO BLAND); Dannii says much the same and Simon says it was magical watching an automaton displaying emotions just like a human, and that he hopes someday the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio visits her and turns her into a real girl. Dermot sends us via video link to Liverpool, where Celebrity Wife of Wayne Rooney is joined by a homosexual friend of Rebeccabots, who desperately cranes his neck to ensure he stays on camera at all times.

Bieber Squad! The producers sent the whelps on a whirlwind tour of their various homesteads, except Niall, because the snow provided an easy excuse to not send the Irish Bieber home. I refuse to believe they would’ve paid to fly all five Biebers to Mullingar just for a few hours, so it’s a good thing Simon was able to activate Rebecca’s Weather Control Module to ensure the freezing weather led to flight cancellations. Nothing remarkable happens during Inferior Bieber’s visit to his old school. There’s an odd moment where Curly Headed Bieber’s very young mother tells him he’ll always be her baby and I swear it totally looks like they’re about to make out. We’re saved from the incest by Muslim Bieber’s footage from his hometown of Bradford, where the fuckwits did a signing at a HMV, attended by a girl with what appears to be “Niall’s No.1 Fan” scrawled across her face. Somehow I don’t think she has much competition for that title. Finally, they travelled to Wolverhampton to do a gig in Superior Bieber’s hometown. The Biebers are singing Elton John’s Your Song, which makes this the second week in a row that an X-Factor contestant has performed a song from an embraced-by-the-public mawkish/sentimental John Lewis ad. They’re covering Ellie Goulding’s cover version, and just like when you do a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox, something has been lost in the constant dilution. The moppets get a lot of fake snow falling from the ceiling for their staging, which makes Inferior Bieber’s decision to wear his hood up quite sensible, particularly when the camera shows us Superior Bieber shaking his hair like a wet dog to get all the fauxsnow out of it. When I say wet dog I mean wet puppy. With big adorable puppy eyes. With VOTE FOR US PLEEEEEEASE tattooed across its corneas. JUDGES! Louis says he hopes they’re in the final tomorrow night. Cheryl has THOROUGHLY ENJOYED their performance, and Simon says something typically desperate and egotistical . Dermot takes us live to Doncaster where Some Wan From Coronation Street is presenting the hometown broadcast. At this point I and every other viewer has completely lost interest in any hometown broadcast that does not involve Stacey Solomon screaming madly into her microphone.

And finally, we have official wave of the future Cher Lloyd. I find myself completely zoning out during Cher’s EPIC JOURNEY VIDEO, probably because my mind didn’t want me to see the recap of her horrendous cover of Girlfriend. Even if it was only 3 seconds of a replay, that’s still 3 seconds too many. Cher’s first stop was her old primary school, presumably because she’d been expelled from her secondary for gouging out a teacher’s eyes. A banner in the school hall says PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GIRL – CHER LLOYD. Presumably this is aimed at the teachers and parents present because I don’t think the children in the hall are even able to understand the word SUPPORT, much less operate a telephone keypad that doesn’t make animal noises when you hit a number. In the car on the way to her home, Cher says to Cheryl “Please hold me now and don’t let go”. I imagine she’s been waiting ten weeks to make that request. Random footage of three policewomen, all of whom have probably arrested Cher for various petty offences in the past, telling us that Cher has the X Factor. And a concealed knife. Back to the studio and Cher is performing a mash-up of... something called The Clapping Song, and the much more recognisable Get Ur Freak On. After 7 years we FINALLY get a bit of Missy Elliot on X-Factor. The world is a better place for this. Cher’s performance is the usual confident strutting but the vocal is a bit messy. I’m starting to doubt that she’s really the wave of the future. We’d best get to the judges’ comments so Simon and Cheryl can reassure me. “Hey you’re in the final! Who would have thought it?” says Louis. Making Cher the only of the four contestants that Louis does not tell us “deserves to be in the final” ad nauseum. Dannii says a whole lot of vagueness. Simon tells us that Cher “smashed it”, that she’s a fearless brat with a heart of gold and she’s the most original and energetic performer on the show. Ah, there’s the hyperbole I so desperately needed. Dermot sends us to a hometown broadcast featuring Scott Mills and I just don’t care.

Celebrity Duet Time! How will they ever top last year, when they brought on serial cannabis fiend and casual sex fan George Michael to sing with baby gay Joe McElderry? First up is Matt Cardle and Rihanna with a cover of Unfaithful, which has been somewhat smartly reworked from a song about a woman lamenting the pain she’s causing her partner by having an affair into a song about a man and a woman having an affair with one another lamenting the pain they’re causing their respective partners. Amazing. Speaking of amazing, and not facetiously, Rihanna is looking absolutely smoking. Almost smokingly-hot enough for me to forget that Matt and his tonsillitis/flu ravaged voice were making an absolute pig’s ear of the song to start with. But Rihanna and her very much on display ten-foot long legs arrive and absolutely steal the show. The performance picks up and gets a bit naughty towards the end and I bet Rihanna totally dropped the hand. Rihanna and her suddenly very Barbadosy voice tell Dermot that she loves Matt’s work. What, his painting and decorating?

Celebrity Duet Number 2 is the terrifying prospect of Christina Aguilera and Rebecca Ferguson. Christina Aguilera is a woman whose screeching can sometimes sound like the ruckus one would hear if a canary was being fucked by a pig. Rebecca Ferguson is a robot with a sound chip that produces soft, slightly-husky, low-key MP3 files. They are not the most obvious pairing to make. Cheryl Cole tells us that the song they’re going to be singing “is an absolutely beautiful song” which is a way of telling us through clever wordplay that the girls are going to be singing Beautiful. Christina appears on stage looking quite... healthy. Fulsome. Buxom. “HUUUUUUUUARGH!” says Xtina, as she somehow manages to make singing the word “On” last for 8 seconds. “AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORGHURRRRRGH” she continues, caterwauling over Rebeccabot’s attempts to join in. Dermot asks Rebecca how it felt to perform with Christina. Rebecca says something in that inimitable Liverpudlian style and Christina has no idea WHAT was said so she just chuckles.

Celebrity Duet Number 3 is One Direction featuring young Robert Williams, in his 18^th appearance on the X-Factor this year alone. There’s a moment in the intro-video where Simon Cowell is seen petting a dog menacingly, like any number of classic villains, and I think it may just be the campest Simon Cowell moment in television history, which is really saying a lot. One Dimension and Robbie are performing She’s the One, which is one of those generally well-liked pop songs that I’ve never actually liked. Hilarious moment at the outset where Liam fucks up his notes and then Harry effortlessly gets the exact same one 5 seconds later. The boys with an average age of 17 sing earnestly into the camera about long term love. Robbie Williams comes on stage, joins in and greatly disappoints me by not doing anything in any way attention-whoreish or annoying. This is not the Robbie Williams we’re used to seeing from between our fingers as we cringe at the television. He only pulls about 8 weird faces rather than the usual 16. Oh wait, he grabs Niall and spins him around at the end. That's better. I guess it’s an okay performance overall, but no one can defeat Rihanna, her legs and her song about infidelity.

Celebrity Duet Number 4 is Cher Lloyd and will.i.am. Sigh. Did we not suffer enough by having the Black Eyed Peas on last week? Is it too much to ask that Cheryl Cole pick her celebrity friends from bands that aren’t objectively the absolute worst thing to happen to music ever? At least there’s no Fergie. We take the little victories we can. Cher starts off singing Where Is The Love? which is probably among the least awful songs in the BEP’s catalogue of horrors but when William appears (not dressed as a Power Ranger this week, which is another improvement) we switch into I’ve Got a Feeling which is from the Oh Sweet Jesus When Will The Hurting Stop? chapter of their discography. Cher is very grateful and seems genuinely happy to have performed with Stupidname, probably because he’s one of Ms. Cole’s best friends and all Cher wants to do is have Cheryl’s babies or failing that, to break into her house, roll around in her duvet and steal a few strands of hair from her hairbrush. Or shower drain. W.i.l.l.i.a.m. departs to make more terrible music after encouraging us to vote for Cher. Can we PLEASE get Kanye West next year instead? To duet with everyone? And then evaluate them?

Now we have to sit through two special guest performances as the price for having Princess Rih-Rih and Skanky Aguilera appear, and also to give ITV an extra 20 minutes or so to make several million pounds on phone votes. First up is Rihanna, with What’s My Name?, which I demand should be renamed Oh Nana. For those unaware, this is a tragic song about two old ladies with Alzheimer’s, each believing the other to be called Nana, repeatedly asking the other “Oh Nana. What’s my name?” Halfway through Rihanna has her backing dancers remove her dressing gown and proceeds to spend the rest of the performance inviting us to get to know her as intimately as her gynaecologist does. And also violates several of the regulations relating to decency in broadcasting. Quite what this spectacle has to do with those two old women in a care home is beyond me, but I’m sure there are many layers of meaning going on that I’m not quite getting.

Dermot informs us that the voting has frozen and we’ll be having our first ejection soon, but not before a performance from Skaguilera, promoting her new movie Burlesque, described by some reviewers as Showgirls for a new generation. A prospect that terrifies and intrigues in equal measure. Christina and her stripperfied backing dancers are putting on a whorehouse themed performance that probably breaches the few remaining broadcasting decency regulations that were left untouched by Rihanna’s performance. There is a lot of ass and crotch. There isn’t as much Christinawauling as one usually gets in her songs, meaning that you can understand about 60% of the lyrics.

Results of the voting as of the Vote Freeze! That’s not quite as catchy as RESULTS TIME, is it? The first act safe and through to the Completely Final Final, We Promise, is Rebeccabot. Such is her excitement that every mobile phone in the studio starts to pick up Rebecca’s thoughts. Thankfully for the security of the complicated files stored in her hard drive, her thoughts are also Liverpudlian, so anyone listening in will be unable to understand. Cheryl Cole looks confused, having completely forgotten she has an act other than Cher Lloyd left in the competition. Next act through to the final is Bieber Squad. Cowell looks absolutely delighted. Matt and Cher remain. Cher looks rather resigned. Sure enough, Matt proceeds to Part 2 of the Never Ending Final. To everyone’s shock, Cher fails to suffer a complete meltdown. The editing team have decided to conclude Cher’s “best bits” VT with a shot of her and will.i.am singing “Tonight’s gonna be a good, good night” which seems like rubbing salt in the wound if you ask me. Dermot speaks for us all when he says how great it is to see Cher not crying, having a tantrum, a fake panic attack or throwing addidas trainers at Dannii Minogue.

CLIFFHANGER ENDING! What will happen in part two? Will One Direction defeat common sense and good taste to claim victory? Will Rebecabot be hacked by terrorists and forced to kill Cheryl Cole? That wouldn’t be so bad, actually. Will Stacey Solomon find her cameraman? Will Matt’s hat make its triumphant return? Who will emerge as champion of X Factor 2010? Well, it’s Matt as we all know, but I promise I’ll try and make it a slightly enjoyable retread of widely known fact.

The X-Factor: Week Nine

IT’S TIME. TO DISGRACE. THE MUSIC! Oh Exuberant Voiceover Man, what will I do without you? Tonight on the X-Factor semi-final, our theme is Club Classics, a choice which has absolutely nothing to do with helping out Cher and One Direction, who in case you had forgotten, are contemporary, relevant and the wave of the future. If you had forgotten then don’t worry, Simon and Cheryl are going to remind you a million times.

In her intro video, Rebecca tells us that she feels that she’s really grown as an android over the last 9 weeks. She’s mastered and customised her sound projection utilities to the point that she’s now confident to begin tweaking her newly installed Upbeat Vocal Programming with Actual Club Classic Show Me Love. To everyone’s shock, Rebecca has not had the song slowed down into a mid-tempo ballad that she can sway and shimmy along to with bored ease - nope, she actually performs the song as it was intended to be performed. And, even more shockingly, Rebeccabot has decided to engage her Mobility Suite at the same time as her Upbeat Vocal Programming. That’s right, Rebecca is actually MOVING. The new operating system they’ve installed is working wonders. Rebecca can now multitask. Presumably she’s also learnt how to copy and paste and play Flash video. Cheryl Cole spends the entire routine smiling vacantly and clapping along like a well trained seal. Judges! Louis Walsh thinks Rebecca showed us love and emotion. That’s because the song is called Show Me Love. And Love is an emotion. Insightful, that Mr Walsh.

Mary Tesco. We’re going to play a game. We’re going to count how many times Louis Walsh tells us that Mary is going to sing her heart. Mary is singing Never Can Say Goodbye. She commences the performance from a chair shaped like an oyster, like Venus’s party animal mother. Then two dancers grab her under both arms and unceremoniously/hilariously haul her up out of the chair, like Venus’s party animal mother who’s had a few too many whiskies and needs a hand getting to her taxi. It’s hardly Mary’s finest hour – upbeat numbers have never been her strength which is probably something they calculated when they decided to have the semi-final be Club Classics. And just like the last time she did an upbeat number, our retinas get burned by the image of Mary shimmying her hips scandalously. TWICE. The end is also terribly out of sync with the backing track. Judges! Dannii lauds the return of Mary’s mojo, which up until last week was being held hostage by Wagner. Cheryl says something vapid, and Cowell and Louis have a bitch-fight about the necessity of mentioning that Mary had flu and couldn’t rehearse all week. Singing her heart out out count: Louis mentions that Mary vomited up her aorta on two occasions, bringing the series total to 48.

On to the last remaining Y chromosome on the show (One Direction don’t count – they have no genitals on account of being from the Disney clone factory) – Matt Cardle. Matt also had flu this week. Hmm... two contestants AND Simon Cowell struck down by flu? Are they sure it’s flu and not a rare strain of Ebola introduced into the air conditioning system by Katie Waissell as her last act of vengeance? Blah blah blah feel sorry for Matt he couldn’t rehearse. In a drastic change to the norm, Matt is singing a song originally performed by a female –Candi Staton’s You’ve Got The Love. He does an alright job, despite the sheen of sweat slicked across his forehead and a general vibe of “Oh fuck, I’m about to collapse”. He can’t be too sick though, because at no point does he ever come close to puking up his heart, so I guess Mary wins the battle of the viruses. Judges! Simon has another hop off the performers for whinging about having flu. We can rest easy in the knowledge then that if one-fifth of One Direction had the sniffles Simon wouldn’t use it to try and generate a few sympathy votes from the public, then.

Next up, Cher Lloyd. Cher deadpans her way through her VT as usual as she tries to tell us if she comes off as cocky/arrogant/obnoxious/insipid, it’s just because she’s a confident performer, and off-stage she’s a soft fluffy bunny with huge anime eyes that quiver tearfully at the slightest hint of rejection. Cher’s club classic is BoB’s Nothin’ On You. I think “Club classic” is pushing it for a song that was released in March, but I guess it’s impossible to stop Cher picking such recent hits given how unrelentingly contemporary and current and relevant she is. The performance follows the well established Cher Lloyd formula – Cher stands on stage and sings, then does the rap bit as a horde of dancers dash frantically about the stage trying to distract us from the ugly faces she's pulling, then we return to the singing for the “glorious” finale. We only deviate from this formula when Cher decides to do a ballad to show us she actually has emotions and didn’t sell them to a pikey for a new crack pipe and a few cans of Dutch Gold. Judges! Louis says that Cher has really come a long way. From what? Songs with a rap in the middle to... songs with a rap in the middle? Cowell looks directly into the camera and tells us that Cher represents every teenager in Britain who has a dream in these dark recessionary times, and that if she makes it into the finals she will become a shining beacon of hope for humanity to really round and find a way forward into a utopia of peace, prosperity and increased revenue for SyCo and its subsidiary companies. He also says it’ll be a “travesty” if she doesn’t make it into the finals. Like the Holocaust.

The Five Muppeteers. Went to see the premiere of the new Narnia movie where they met Joe McElderry, who advised them to never admit that one of them is gay if they want to maximise the interest from young record buying tweens, as he has discovered to his low-selling disappointment. Simon couldn’t mentor the boys this week as he had flu. Superior Bieber holds up a Get Well Soon card that a production assistant made and handed to him five minutes before they filmed their video, in order to show how cheeky and fun they are. Cheryl mentored the boys in Simon’s stead. So I guess they all have the clap now. Bieber Squad are channelling the ghost of Paije, as they perform a song with altered lyrics to make it clear THEY ARE NOT GAYS – Rihanna’s Only Girl In The World. A song so current and relevant that it makes Chery Lloyd’s song choice seem like something from the showband era. This particular "club classic" was released two months ago. “I’m gonna make you feel, like you’re the only girl in the world. Like you’re the only girl that I’ll ever love” they sing, in a move that causes 150,000 14 year olds to collapse and another 300,000 to immediately pick up their phones and start dialling. In an unprecedented move, the choreography allows Muslim Bieber to take up a place in the centre of the fivesome where normally only Superior Bieber and Curly Headed Bieber are allowed to stand. I guess they’re being nice to him since his grandfather died this week as Katie’s campaign of vengeance claimed its first life. Judges! Dannii and Louis give us variations on delivering the words “next big boyband” while Cole says that the song was perhaps “too current” which leads to the most amazingly hypocritical moment of the entire series, as the Dark Lord of the Sith himself accuses her of “being tactical”. Bwahahahahahaha. This from the man who had Big Band week scrapped for the first time in the history of the show because it wouldn’t lend itself easily to One Direction or Cher.

Matt Cardle’s second performance! Is “She’s Always A Woman” and it’s fucking boring. And terrible. It’s easy to see what they were going for – cover one of the soppiest songs to (re)enter the collective consciousness this year as a result of its use in a high profile advertising campaign, the sort of song Matt could drone through easily any other day of the week, and watch the votes, love letters and wet knickers arrive in an avalanche. Unfortunately, Matt’s hurty throat scuppers the performance somewhat. But hell, even if it hadn’t it’s still a bloody boring song so it’s hard to know which of the two is more to blame for the general awfulness of it. Judges! Louis says that Matt has never had a bad performance. WHAT ABOUT THE ONE HE JUST DID, LOUIS, YOU MUPPET? Cheryl says she can see the illness on Matt’s face. She’s terribly perceptive like that, what with her uncanny ability to see the cold sweat creeping down his forehead.

It’s Two-For-One time at Tesco, with Mary’s second performance. Mary tells us in her intro video that the semi final is about five people fighting like mad. Five people? Is that confirmation that all of One Dimension are just clones of Justin Bieber made to look slightly different through clever lighting tricks and hair products? For those playing X Factor cliché bingo, Dannii drops that old classic “One Hundred Million Per Cent” when talking about how much passion Mary has to give in her performance to get a place in the finale. Dannii won’t be impressed by simple tricks like expelling your heart out of your mouth through the medium of song, oh no. The only thing that’s going to do it for Ms Minogue is watching someone redefine the laws of mathematics. Mary is singing Misty Water Coloured Memorieeeeees and is in bits after about 10 seconds into the performance. She struggles on and gives an average but competent rendition. Unspectacular but at the same time one has to give it to her for delivering a genuinely emotionally resonant performance. Also, I realise I just said “one has to give it to her” and apologise if that creates any unpleasant images of getting it on with Mary. Judges! Dannii says it was beautiful and that she shouldn’t be crying. Mary explains she used to sing it for her mother all the time but hasn’t for 15 years since her mother was killed by death. Dannii blinks and wishes the botox hadn’t robbed her of the ability to cry. Cheryl and Simon give reserved praise and Louis urges women of a certain age to vote for Mary because she’s every woman. Singing her heart out count at the end of the judging: 76.

Cher Lloyd! Cheryl reminds us that this is our last chance to get Cher into the final. But don’t worry, because if you forget to vote they’ll just change the rules to keep her in anyway. Cher tells us that she’s never been given a song like this that has made her feel every single emotion under the sun. Even ennui. Cheryl explains that the song we’re about to hear was originally by two artists (let’s guess... one of them rapped and the other sang, right?) but Cher will make it her own. By rapping and singing. Cher explains that the song is her cry to the nation “Please. Let me make it.” Dannii describes the song choice as “dangerous” and the entire intro video creates a sense of apocalyptic dread – as though if Cher fails to pull this one off then her soul will actually explode and destroy the entire genre of pop-rap. Cher is singing a sort of mash-up of Love the Way You Lie Parts the First and Second. Basically some of Ri-Ri’s singy bits from Part 2 and whatever non-sweary Eminem parts they could cull from either song. It is horrendous, right from the off. Her voice waivers all over the place for the singing and the arrangement for the music is atrocious. She’s completely emotionally disconnected from the lyrics, which isn’t what you want from a song that’s about a mutually destructive abusive relationship. Sort of like the one Cher has with the X-Factor. It’s terribly overwrought and over-cooked – like Cher is trying to batter us with the lyrics to prove that she gets them when it’s patently obvious that she doesn’t have a clue. Gouts of flame erupt from the stage as Cher screeches to the finale. Judges! Louis loves everything about Cher! Dannii would have preferred to see Cher sing a ballad. Simon says that Cher is fantastic and that she hasn’t sold out. Let me repeat that: Simon Cowell, who believes integrity is just a word you can potentially get a lot of points for in Scrabble, just tried to assure us that someone was genuine. Cher responds to Dannii’s (fairly inoffensive) criticism by saying she just wants to bring a new twist to British music and do something different. By being completely repetitive and doing the same thing every week?

Rebecca Ferguson! Good lord, I can actually feel the lassitude seeping into my bones just from watching her intro video. She seems like a lovely girl but she’s just so fucking boring. I mean, I’ve had to invent a persona where she’s a fucking robot from the future just to keep myself awake recapping her performances for chrissakes. Anyway, Rebecca-bot is singing Amazing Grace, because she has only recently learned that many humans follow various belief systems called religions and thinks it would be interesting to explore that area of the race through the medium of song. As this is the X Factor, it is of course impossible for a song like this to be performed without 42 people swaying behind Rebecca, pretending to be a choir. It’s a very pretty vocal performance and suits Rebecca’s voice, unlike a lot of the songs she’s done before, but remains pretty boring. I mean, it’s hardly the wave of the future like Pikey Lloyd or One Dimension, is it? Louis says Rebecca is his favourite contestant ever. I can imagine Louis Walsh waking up in the morning, picking a box of Weetabix out of the cupboard and squawking “YOU’RE MY FAVOURITE HIGH FIBRE BREAKFAST CEREAL EVER!” returning to the cupboard, spotting a box of Bran Flakes and feeling terribly guilty for a moment, before shouting “AND YOU’RE MY FAVOURITE HIGH FIBRE BREAKFAST CEREAL THAT COMES IN A BLUE BOX!” and smiling stupidly to himself. And then falling over. Simon applauds Rebecca for not having a game-plan and being sincere, two qualities he cannot understand but does admire.

Bieber Squad are up last. They explain they’re feeling vewy vewy sad because Muslim’s grandfather was killed by Katie. It’s particularly upsetting because after being together for 9 weeks, they’ve started to feel like they’re brothers. That’s because you’re all fucking cloned from the same source, you dumbasses. Hey, remember when Big Gay Paije’s grandmother died and they never mentioned it in his intro-video or sought to use it to leverage sympathy votes? Wasn’t that nice and dignified? Yeah, I thought so too. Ah! It’s Chasing Cars! I’m surprised it took this long for someone to cover it, but it was as inevitable as the annual charity single. Irish Bieber’s had a makeover this week, and his horrible two-toned hair has been more uniformly bleached so he looks like less of a retard than usual. Yes, I do actually find myself more interested in Fuckwits United’s hair than in anything they could possibly perform. Unless it was Telephone. That’d be worth watching. So yeah, it’s Chasing Cars. There are lots of puppy dog eyes and there’s a key change and swaying and it’s all very saccharine and I need to take a few units of insulin afterwards. Judges! Louis knows all their names! Dannii thinks they’ve never had such a good band on the show! Poor JLS. Cheryl’s lipstick is the same deep red as her World AIDS Day ribbon! Simon talks about how hard working they are and what a good work ethic they exhibit and how even when he knows their jaws are getting tired they just keep on sucking anyway until he’s finally close. And he’s really proud of them for that.

RESULTS SHOW

I’m never sure how to react when we have three musical guests on the results show. On the one hand, it saves us having to watch the horrific group songs. On the other hand, the group songs can be fucking hilarious. Oh well, no group song tonight as we march on to our first act with something to promote; former X-Factor champion and forever in Leona Lewis’s shadow: Alexandra Burke. Alex is promoting The Silence, an insipid little ballad and roughly the twelfth single to be released from her debut album Overcome, now available as a special deluxe edition featuring new songs and a scratch-and-sniff poster of Alex that smells like that deodourant she advertises. The singing is good, the performance weird (violin players dangling upside-down from the ceiling while Alex is lifted into the air on a harness to wail the ending notes) and Alexandra herself as pleasant as ever. Like a version of Leona Lewis with a personality.

Our second act is the cast of Glee. This is going to be very confusing for British viewers, where the second season hasn’t even started yet. Who is the blonde guy with the porn star lips? Where’s Kurt? (Answer: Off being a martyr for clichéd storylines to give gay characters, probably) And even more bizarrely, why are they insisting on having the actor playing Artie perform in his wheelchair when we all know that he can fucking walk? There’s a hilarious moment where Mercedes (I can’t be arsed finding out their real names) bellows DON’T STOP BELIEVING right into Simon Cowell’s face, and given his penchant for darker ladies who can belt out glory notes, I’m pretty sure he probably got an erection there. And came. Twice. Clean up on aisle number 4, Mary.

Finally and most abominably of all, we have the Black Eyed Peas with their latest absolute musical abortion. It’s impossible to recap what they did, because the performance itself actually resulted in the complete destruction of the concept of music itself, throughout the universe. It’s difficult to fathom how this band keep managing to plumb lower and lower depths, considering their discography includes such disasters as Let’s Get Retarded, Don’t Phunk With My Heart, My Fucking Humps and Boom Boom Pow, but each and every time, just when you think they’ve hit absolute rock bottom... oh look, here’s a lower place. The horror concludes with Cheryl Cole’s celebrity friend will.i.am announcing that his favourite acts are Rebeccabot and Cher. And the sky is blue.

With the marketing over and done with we can finally get on to the actual results. The first act through to the final is... One Direction. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Fuck you, voting public. Next act through is Rebeccabot. Rebecca searches for happiness.exe and smiles. And Matt is through, too. Which leaves Mary and Cher... in the sing-off? Huh? But it’s the semi-final. The semi-final never involves a sing-off. It’s always down to the public vote alone at this point in the competition (and in some years, even the week BEFORE the semi-final) This can only mean one thing: Cher was bottom of the public vote. Speaking of, Ms. Lloyd has already started falling to pieces before she’s even done her song for survival. By falling to pieces I do of course mean that she’s started scrunching her face up and looking like she’s about to shit herself as she tries in vain to squeeze out a drop of fluid from her eyes. Mary just looks resigned. Mary is a smart woman.

Before we reach the most obvious foregone conclusion in the history of foregone conclusions, we have to sit through Mary doing It’s A Man’s World, which you might remember she performed in the very first show all those weeks ago. It’s a confident performance with no emotional theatrics – it’s pretty obvious Mary knows she’s a goner and is just enjoying her last shot at performing for several million viewers. What is it with X-Factor losers exiting with grace and dignity the past few weeks? Even Katie managed it. Cher totters on-stage to sing Britney Spears’s Everytime. Cher is obviously confused, because she starts acting out an emotional breakdown halfway through the song, but as anyone can tell you, Everytime is from the period BEFORE Britney went storming off the emotional rocker. You need to consult some Britney Spears musical historians next time, Ms Lloyd. I think I know one or two who might be able to help. JUDGES! Louis saves Mary because she sang her heart out 112 times throughout the series. Dannii saves Cher because she knows she’s the most disposable judge and would like to have a job next year. Cheryl saves Cher, obviously. And Cowell saves Cher, also obviously. And so, the most bizarre and questionable semi-final in the history of the X-Factor draws to a close, and Mary resigns herself to making a couple of grand from appearing in Tesco ads and singing on the Late Late Show. Next week we have TWO NIGHTS OF TWO HOUR SHOWS, which is going to absolutely destroy me. Particularly if Bieber Squad win. I’m warning you Britain, DO NOT do that to me.