The X-Factor 2011: Week 4 - THE RESULTS

It’s Sunday! It’s the X-Factor! It’s the results show. Sorry, I got a little bit Louis Walsh there, didn’t I? As it’s almost Halloween, it’s time to get really scary, so the contestants have decided to treat us to another horrendous group song. Forget Paranormal Activity, if they package every X-Factor group song ever into a short film they’d end up with the scariest Halloween flick ever. This week, the contestants are ruining Bright Lights Bigger City, which wasn’t even that good a song to begin with. The use of autotune and reverb means that Frankie is singing in tune for the first time since... well, since the last group song two weeks ago. At one point a random member of the audience appears on-stage to join in the.... oh, it’s Sophie. 

After the group song, comes the interminable recap of last night’s performances with backstage highlights. Apparently Louis said the Sophie comes across as a “secretary that sings at the weekend”. I don’t even remember that part. The mental fugue that descends upon viewers when Sophie appears on-screen must be spreading beyond when she’s just singing. Misha B in rhino-form bullies Pick ‘n’ Mix. Janet fails to do Horrible Ireland proud by being shit. But Louis thinks she’s great. Louis would think a dead pigeon was great if you told him it was Irish. The function of this week’s interminable recap seems to be to remind us all that last night’s show was resoundingly boring. 

And now we’re on to the first guest performance of the night, it’s last year’s Chosen One, Cher Lloyd. Does this mean that this time next year we’re going to be watching Frankie promote a new single? The hyperbole-filled introductory piece struggles to find enough information to make Cher seem exciting. DEBUT NUMBER 1, it exclaims, as we’re forced to endure a 4-second clip of Swagger Jagger. Which is about 4 seconds more than anyone should have to spend listening to it. 100 MILLIN HITS ON YOUTUBE, the on-screen text thunders, failing to elaborate that those 100 million hits were from people logging on to see the point at which the concept of music hit the actual rock bottom. Considering how low-rent the musical guests have become, and how they’re really having to stretch the hype-text, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of them boast about how many followers someone has on Twitter. Cher performs her new song “I'm a Big Pikey” while dressed as one of the horrible children from Toddlers and Tiaras crossed with a Quality Street. She’s actually become even more of a Cheryl Cole clone than she was before. Song finished, Dermot asks her how she’s been doing.  She explains that it’s been a lot of hard work, and that she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since the police evicted her from Dale Farm, but they’re getting on with things.

Dermot decides to ask the judges who’s in trouble this week. Alexandra says that she wasn’t feeling Frankie this week. Judging by his VTs, she’s about the only woman in Britain who hasn’t. Our next musical guest is Nicole Sherzinger, a woman who can make Sophie Habibis seem interesting. Nicole mimes her new song. If she mimed, and Cher the Pikey sang live, does that mean that Cher has more credibility than Nicole. Dermot asks Nicole how it feels to be the woman who destroyed Cheryl Cole’s career. Nicole says it feels awesome and makes her hot, and proceeds to furiously finger herself on-stage. 

It’s results time! The first act safe is Little Goddess Kitty. Yay! The audience boo, because they’re all fucking idiots. Little Risk are safe, as is Not-so-Little Craig. Little Mix make it through, and officially become the most successful X-Factor girlband ever by managing to survive more than a month. Little Gay Marcus is through to next week. He smiles! He’s so happy! He sings! He dances! Little Johnny is safe and busts some Night Fever moves to celebrate. My eyes! Little Elfin Janet from Horrible Ireland is through, leaving Little Talent, Misha Bitch and Little Interest in the bottom three. Dermot announces that Frankie is safe, because people are actually picking up their phones and voting for him. These people deserve to be sterilised lest we all suffer the prospect of them passing on their clearly deficient genes.

So, it’s the Invisible Woman versus Misha B in the sing-off. Sophie is first to perform, in what seems like a stupid move. I mean, if Sophie goes first then it just gives Misha more time to stew in her anger back-stage. Girl is gonna be tweeting some pretty nasty shit at Little Mix tonight. Sophie has decided to sing The XX’s Shelter in a last ditch attempt to be remembered. I am honestly thrown by the choice of song and never expected to hear this particular band on this particular show. Of coruse, Sophie makes a balls of it, but that’s probably because she knows she’s going home.

Alexandra Burke introduces Misha’s performance by saying “This is way too close to home”. Alexandra, as you might remember, was NEVER in the bottom two. Misha B makes her way on-stage, having caused grievous bodily harm to several production assistants and emotionally terrorised several others. She sings Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody, and is quite good at it, except for the part where she “breaks down” at the end and can’t continue, which comes across about as genuine as anything that Frankie Coccozza has ever said or done in one of his introductions.

Judges! Dermot announces that Kelly Rowland is joining in via telephone from Los Angeles, which is just amazing. Kelly sounds like that voice you put on when you're phoning in "sick" to work. Louis decides to send Sophie home. You bastard, weren’t you watching her VT last night? Don’t you realise her parents have forgotten all about her and she has nowhere to go? Tulisa likewise decides to send Sophie home, because Misha will fuck her up if she doesn’t. Dermot goes to Kelly for the telephone judging, and she too decides to send Sophie home, because Misha stole nudes from her mobile phone and threatened to leak them to the press. I think we had a lucky escape this week, folks. If Misha had been ejected then she would go on a one-woman crusade to bully THE ENTIRE WORLD. Pray she does not end up in the bottom two next week. And while you’re at it, pray that the frontal lobes of the idiots who are actually voting for Frankie stop working, so we can finally be rid of him. Next week’s theme is “club classics”. I can’t wait for Janet’s interpretation of Benny Banassi’s Satisfaction.