The X-Factor 2011: Week 3

 It’s Saturday. It’s 8pm. You know what that means? Yes, it’s time. To disgrace. The concept of Rock Music.

Additionally, it is also time for Voiceover Man to do a relentless recap of last week’s “drama”.  There was a massive shock when hot-favourite super-talent and all-round likeable moppet Frankie, who you might know from that new film Cantagion, ended up in the bottom two! None of that is true, except for the bit about the bottom two. And maybe the part about Contagion. Dermot O’Leary seduces his way on stage and introduces the judges: puddin-lover K-Row; puddin it on the down-low Louis Walsh; puddin it whatever way Simon Cowell tells him to, it’s Gary Barlow; and Tulisa.  GET READY TO ROCK, Voiceover Man enthuses. I am on the very edge of my seat with not caring.

Marcus Collins is up first. I wonder will his vote collapse from being in the sacrificial slot. His intro video is a bit boo-hoo though, so maybe that’ll save him. Plus he’s a cutie pie. Breast cancer! Loneliness! No money for the bus! Homosexuality! Jesus, the Marcus Collins Story has it all. Coming this winter on Sky UK Living TV Gold. There’s a whiff of a last minute change about this intro-video actually. It seems like it’d be more suited to the postponed Heroes-week theme they decided to abandon because the producers thought Rock Week would be a better idea to save Chosen One Frankie.  Anyway, Marcus sings Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way and it’s alright. He’s only ever alright, really. He’s competent but he never seems to go beyond that. Judges! “You stand. You smile.” Louis Walsh is as insightful as ever. 

Second act of the night is wee Janet Devlin from Tyrone in horrible Ireland. Please vote for her so she never has to go back to horrible Ireland where no one is ever happy. People think she’s a witch because of her bright red hair, you know. They‘d throw potatoes at her except the Irish need to hold on to them in case there’s another famine during this time of austerity. Janet’s intro video is Janet versus the press. Basically they’re trying to make her seem like less of a wallflower and it isn’t working because I refuse to believe that tabloid journalists, the scum of the earth, are as tame as this. Either that or they fed them all Valium before the interview. Janet is singing Sweet Child of Mine. After we found out that Janet is a bit of a goth last week, I was expecting Actual Rock from this performance. Instead, we get a harp. Just like all those famous rock songs with the harps in them. Like AC/DCs You Harped For Me All Night Long, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Harpist, or Pink Floyd’s Another Harp In The Wall. Needless to say, the song has been stripped back to appropriate Janet levels and turned into a ballad. It’s inoffensive but not particularly interesting and Janet’s schtick might get a bit boring soon. That said, she seems sweet so I can’t hate her too much. Judges! Tulisa chastises Janet for not rocking out and points to the X-Factor Rulebook, Section 4, which states that what Janet did was not a rock song, but a rock song turned into a ballad. Tulisa forgets about Section 4 Subsection 1, which states that only an idiot takes an X-Factor theme seriously.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course. Except when that horse, is Sami. Sami’s intro video basically spoils that she’s going to be doing a Cher song, because her mentor is Louis and he’s a big fucking queen. Sami comes on-stage and oh dear, the fashion Nazis of the Style Team™ have struck again. Sami is wearing leather and her stomach unfortunately looks like a tarpaulin stretched over two tyres. Tonight she’s singing If I Could Turn Back Time (I’d Wear a Poncho). Part-way through, the camera switches to Louis and he’s singing along and loving it, the queerball. Judges! Tulisa admits it’s a karaoke song but that Sami did it well. Kelly says she sounded fantastic and asks her if she had a great time, for some reason. Gary Barlow decides he hasn’t channelled enough Cowell and launches into a massive spiel about how boring it was that sort of goes a bit too far. Also, it’s a bit rich to have Barlow going on about performers being real when he chose fucking Frankie. Dermot speaks to Sami who desperately implores viewers to vote for her despite the recession. No, she actually does that. I think I’ll get a t-shirt printed that says SPARE A POUND AND VOTE SAMI. Sami whinnies and canters off-stage.

Up next is Rhythmic Kandy Girl-Lash. As is typical with a group at this stage of the competition, their intro video has now become all about giving them easy to identify roles so that the public can point to one and say “Ah, she’s the sassy one!” or “Ah, she’s the crazy one!”. It’s 90 seconds of pure fakery that actually includes scenes of the girls saying “Rock it!” and head-banging. They’re so genuinely fun, I wish I lived with them. I definitely wouldn't kill them. They’re performing that famous lighters-in-the-air rock anthem Tik Tok. Yes, that Tik Tok. The one by Kesha. Just when my ears were adjusting, it all takes a Cher Lloyd style diversion into that other great rock song, Salt n’Pepa’s Push It. No amount of dancers body-popping on-stage can distract from the fact that it’s a pile of shite. Judges! Kelly says she wants the girls to be better than the last girl group that was here. LAY OFF OF 2 SHOES YOU BITCH. Gary and Louis lay into Tulisa for giving them a pop song. Tulisa says they took a pop song and made it rock and then all the judges kick off on one and start shouting over one another and it’s all terribly awkward and just like when mum and dad fight. Hold me.

Biscuitman is up next and he’s... what? I forgot someone? Sophie? Sophie who? Oh. Apparently someone called Sophie was up after Rhythmic Kandy Girl-Lash and performed a stripped back non-rock version of Livin’ on a Prayer. I vaguely remember an intro-video in which someone was upset at being boring, so she decided to talk to the same bunch of Tamest Tabloid Journalists In The World that Janet faced down. Except the most interesting thing they could find to say about her was “What a nice girl.” Sophie, infuriated, decided to become more interesting by killing the journalists. Alas, her scheme was over before it began as she had already bored them to death. The quest to be noticed continues.

So, Big Gay Biscuitman. This week, he tells us, he’s going to be singing a man song. Fancy that. Craig is wearing a leather jacket that barely fits him. I should mention that he’s not the only one who has worn leather tonight. In fact most of the contestants have, because to the X-Factor producers, leather = Rock. The same sort of maths that gives us Harp = Rock, really. Luckily, Sami eats three whole cows a day, so there was plenty of hide to go around to clothe all of the contestants. Craig begins his man song, Oasis’ Stop Crying Your Heart Out, and is immediately intimidating and simultaneously camp as tits. I don’t know how he does it. Maybe it’s the leather jacket. He snarls. He scrunches his face up. He sings the song as a ballad. He looks weird and vaguely scary. It’s Biscuitman by numbers. Rock week is turning out to be pretty fucking boring this year. Judges! Gary Barlow voids his bowels because his rectum is so bored of being attached to Gary Barlow.

Kitty is up next, and if anyone can save us from the tedium, it’s her. Her intro-video is only 90 seconds long and it’s easily the most interesting part of the show so far. It charts Kitty’s obsession with fame from the girlbands she was a member of until she slept with everyone else’s boyfriends and killed all the other members for not beng as amazing as she is to her theatre work and her thousands upon thousands of self-promotional Youtube videos. There’s even footage of Louis rejecting some of Kitty’s ideas for her performances such as swan-diving from the roof into a pot of molten gold. Kitty is singing Live and Let Die. There are jets of fire, high notes and genuine head-banging and hair-whippin’. Eat that, Sophie Habibas. Tulisa says it was actual rock. She is right. She lauds Kitty for being such a good performer and says some rubbish about her being a good person. Let’s not get too carried away, Tulisa, Kitty would still sell you into a sex-trafficking ring if she thought it would help her make an album. We’re now more than halfway through the show and Kelly Rowland has not once talked about puddin’ it dahn. I think she used up her entire pudding quota last week. Either that or she’s working on a new, even more exciting catchphrase. I can’t wait.

And now, it’s Frankie. The intro-video is... well, where to start. It’s a fucking mess. They’ve decided that whole cheeky chappie thing wasn’t working, so they’re reinventing Frankie as the next nearest archetype; the likeable bad boy. To this end, the video is all about how Frankie spent all week drinking shots and luvin’ it and pulling “birds” and not listening to Gary. He’s so young, he just wants to have fun and not listen to that old coot Gazza! He’s such a rebel! It’s absolutely the most contrived thing we’ve ever seen on this show in eight years and that is saying an awful lot. I guess it’s a different tactic to having Danyl Johnson or Katie Waissell shave their heads to show how they’ve been humbled and it’s time for a new start. Then again, if Frankie’s in the bottom two again tomorrow I wouldn’t bet against them doing that... Frankie’s performance continues the fakery with monochrome shots of him making his way from backstage as though he was some sort of rock legend. Eventually he swaggers on-stage to sing Primal Scream’s Get Your Rocks Off. They’ve turned the background music up to 11, to drown Frankie’s strangled-cat vocals out. He seems to have toned down the over-enunciation a little bit, or it could just be that his vocal cords are slowly rotting away as a consequence of being attached to such a toxic individual. JUDGES! Louis says he did the right thing in saving Frankie last week. Gary has an important announcement to make. He says he was lying last week when he said Frankie’s vocals were good. I take 5 minutes out to come to terms with this, while Gary goes on to explain that this week, he’s not lying and Frankie was everything he wanted him to be. You wanted him to be a hateable wanker? Mission accomplished.

Following that shit-storm is The Risk. As with Rhythmic Kandy Girl-Lash’s Intro video, this one is all about creating personas for the members. So there’s Charlie the rat-faced lead-singer; the cute one, the other one, and the black one. The video focuses on The Black One, to flesh him out as more than just The Black One but also as The Black One Who Is a Ladies Man. We’re shown footage of the boys on a night out; The Black Ladies Man is pleased when a girl gives him her number. I know, a young woman giving a z-list celebrity her phone number. What a shocker. We see The Risk in rehearsal, where they’re shit, which segues nicely into the performance, where they’re also shit. They sing Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. It’s actually better than when Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley was on the results show the other night, but that’s because he basically vomited up his lungs on-stage. The judges chastise Tulisa again for taking a pop song and making it rock. Louis, in a moment that is absolutely not scripted, prompts the boys to reveal that one of them has AIDS in his tonsils, or something.

Brace yourselves for Johnny Robinson. Johnny had intended singing a ballad tonight in order to impress his boyfriend Gary Barlow, but then the producers changed the theme to Rock at the last minute to help Frankie, so that scuppered Johnny’s plans. Instead of My Heart Will Go On, he’ll be singing I Believe in a Thing Called Love. Given how completely not seriously the other judges have been taking the requirements of the theme, I’m pretty sure that Johnny could’ve gotten away with singing a I Believe in a Thing Called Love accompanied by a harpist. Or My Heart Will Go On with a 2-second guitar riff at the start. It is both ludicrous and brilliant at the same time. I think I genuinely like Johnny, if only because he makes Gary Barlow seem even more ridiculous every week. Judges! Kelly says that Johnny is her guilty pleasure. Barlow says he rather liked it, trying to emulate those moments where Cowell would cut the joke contestant some slack. Johnny gets the biggest reception of the night. Backstage, Kitty Brucknell strangles a puppy in disgust.

Ad breaks! Did you know, that Pampers are giving out tetanus injections to babies in third-world countires for every pack of environment-destroying shit-rags you buy? That’s right, every time you don’t buy Pampers, you are killing babies. You fucking monster.

Back to the X-Factuh, and Misha Barton is closing the show with Prince’s Purple Rain. She’s rocking a whole Tina Turner by way of Thunderdome look tonight. It’s a good performance but not particularly memorable. Or maybe that’s because Ruth Lorenzo will always be my favourite Purple Rainer. NEVER FORGET! What is memorable however, is the huge kerfuffle that erupts between the judges when Tulisa tries to diplomatically suggest that Misha might have a bad attitude back-stage and is possibly being mean to other contestants without realising. Kelly Rowland explodes and says that’s something that should be left back-stage, while Louis, like the little shit-stirrer he is, sticks his oar in and says that one of his acts is being bullied by Misha too. This makes me picture Misha back-stage throwing sugar cubes at Sami while shouting “Are you still with Martin, Sonia? Neigh! Neigh!”.  The show ends with Kelly Rowland roaming about on-stage looking for the prop that fired the jets of flame into the air during Kitty’s song, so that she can turn it on Louis and Tulisa.