X Factor Week 8 Recap and Results

It’s time! To face the terrifying prospect of Christopher Maloney singing TWICE. So incomprehensible to my brain is this concept, that my mind left my body last weekend, and travelled non-corporeally to London where, for the good of mankind, I attempted to do battle with Maloney on a psychic level. I hurled numerous telepathic attacks at him over the course of several days, preventing me from completing last week’s recap. Eventually I realised that my battle was pointless. Nothing can sway Chris from his dead-eyed determination to succeed and inflict a unique interpretation of various 70s and 80s compilation albums upon us. His brow is furrowed, his goal is within reach. He’s thrusting his arm out, gesticulating with faux-emotion. He could win the X-Factor. He. Could win. The X-Factor. Repeat that 17 times as a mental exercise in steeling yourself for that eventuality.

I also missed the start of tonight's show because I was still mourning Ella’s death. Oh, you mean she didn’t die? Are you sure? I just assumed, what with the reaction to it all... No? Okay, then. I actually missed the start of this week’s show because I was busy shooting heroin into my eyeball. Chasing the dragon is the only thing that gets me through this nightmare now. Anyway, I missed Rylan’s first performance, but caught up online so really my recap should be seamless, which makes this paragraph completely pointless. You just wasted precious minutes of your life reading this, you pathetic bastard.

Rylan’s up first, singing Mamma Mia. Rylan tells Nicole that she’s the first judge ever to make it to the quarter finals with her entire category intact. Nicole celebrates by tangling herself into some sort of yoga position and making whale noises while flapping her arms. It’s her least erratic contribution to the show tonight. Rylan and the rest of the boys celebrate by putting on a Thanksgiving dinner for her. The sight of James Arthur gingerly fingering an uncooked turkey is something I am not going to forget in a hurry. The performance is typical Rylan: barmy, out of tune and with lots of pouting. However it is notable for perhaps being the first time to date that Rylan murders an entire song without segueing into another one. The staging involves dancers dressed as chess pieces parading around a checkerboard-clad Rylan. It makes absolutely no sense but it’s miles better than Chris Maloney’s eyes boring into your soul.

JUDGES! Louis, shockingly, loved it. He thinks that the performance was just like Xmas day. Clearly some sick shit goes on chez Louis over Xmas, then. Louis doesn’t think Rylan is a joke act, he thinks he could be a massive success in Ibiza and the dance charts. He’s just like a little Tiesto. Tulisa loved the staging, because chess really engages her strategic brain. She does criticise the dancers however, pointing out that if the defending rook had been sacrificed, it would’ve opened up an opportunity to promote the pawn and deliver a devastating material advantage. Gary Barlow says Rylan shouldn’t be in the show at this point and not much else. Nicole wishes she was the gel on Rylan’s hair. I think a want a book of Nicole non-sequitors for Christmas.

In their VT, Union J explain how heartbroken they were last weekend when Ella died. We see footage of a bawling Gaymi collapsing into the manly arms of Chris Maloney. TRAITOR. The VT touches on Gaymi’s decision to come out and the reason for it: Things have gotten desperate for Union J. They’ve been in the bottom two twice now, and the producers have decided that they need all the votes they can get. The girls-love-Union-J angle just wasn’t working as strongly as they hoped, so it’s time to target the secondary market for boybands: the gays. Thus, Gaymi is free. Here’s a collage of things gay people enjoy to celebrate his liberation:

The boys are performing The Winner Takes It All. They croon at some young girls who have no doubt been planted in the audience to subconsciously suggest to other prepubescent females “if you’re not as enthusiastic about Union J as these hired plants are, then your minge will fall off”. The boys bounce around and enthusiastically high-five the random girls. Except Gaymi. He shows casual indifference and couldn’t care less if your minge fell off.

JUDGES! Tulisa commends the boys for their vocals. They were completely... EN POINTE. Can someone just please take her aside and shoot her? Or failing that, just explain to her what en pointe means? The Barlow says that everything about the boys feels right, and mentions someone other than Poor Man’s Harry Styles and Gaymi by name, which I think is actually the first time one of The Nameless Duo’s true names have been spoken aloud on-air. He’s called Josh, apparently. Nicole congratulates Gaymi on being gay, and also mentions Josh by name. I’m not okay with all this Josh-pushing. It’s undermining the comfortable dynamic they’d established with Union J. Things are changing too quickly... Gaymi is gay now, Josh has a name and Poor Man’s Harry Styles hasn’t gotten a look in. Still, at least the other one is still being ignored.

Nicole invites us to share Jahmene’s dream! I'll pass, because I imagine Jahmene’s dreams are a dark and scary place where he keeps all his true feelings about things. There’s no awkward giggles and downward-glancing in Jahmene’s subconscious; it’s all paddles and fleshlights and nipple clamps and things that’d make 50 Shades of Grey seem like Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret. I have to mention Jahmene’s inner darkness because his VT is all about the horrible things his mother has endured and I’m hardly going to joke about that am I? Well, okay, I would. Sufficeth to say that Jahmene is just a little too attached to his mother and it’s all a little Norman Bates. His mother is awesome though. She has gigantic pigtails that look like they're from an anime. This week he’s singing  I Have A Dream. It’s boring and that’s all I have to say about it because watching Jahmene perform is never the most fascinating experience in the world but this week it’s particularly bland.

JUDGES! Louis doesn’t think Abba is Jahmene’s thing. Jahmene agrees enthusiastically and says that whips, suspenders and fuck-harnesses are more his thing. He did however, Louis tells us, sing his heart out. DRINK! Tulisa says it was stripped back. DRINK! Gary, of all people, says that it was en pointe. DRINK AGAIN. Nicole calls him her “lamb chop”. DRINK UNTIL YOUR LIVER BURSTS AND YOU DIE. At least then you’ll escape this ridiculously predictable cliché-fest.

James Arthur, the physical embodiment of Real Music Itself™ mumbles about how tough being in the bottom two last week was, and how sad he is that Ella is dead. We are reminded several times that PEOPLE HAVE TO VOTE. And if you wanted to vote for Ella, vote for James instead because now he wants to win and dedicate it in tribute to the Golden Goddess (of donkeys, mules and horses, in her mortal form as Ella the Baby Pony and Adele Clone) herself. And basically that’s it for James’s VT: vote now, vote often and vote in tribute to Ella. James performs a boring guitar-driven version of SOS with minimal staging, probably because It’s All About The Voice with James and he is so credible and genuine and VOTE FOR REAL MUSIC. It’d be kinda funny if James won actually. He’s the sort of singer who, with decent material, the self-important tastemakers at Radio 1 in the UK would cream themselves over (i.e. mong-faced and has a guitar); but he’s tainted by association with the X-Factor, nemesis of Real Music. Perhaps James is some sort of make-up-wearing messianic figure who can bridge the gap between the two worlds. Maybe he's our saviour... Maybe he's the Anti-Chris.

JUDGES! Louis tells us it would’ve been a tragedy to lose James. He made the song his own. DRINK! He’s already a recording artist. DRINK! At this point, I think I could just write the JUDGES! sections of the recaps a week in advance and arrive at a close approximation of what’s actually said. Nicole rambles incoherently about badgers and goshawks and she’s probably terribly, terribly high or drunk.

It’s Christopher Maloney. I think I can sum up why a victory for Christopher would be such a travesty with the following quotation from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which at the time we all naively assumed was just a film but in reality was an oracular work of art, accurately predicting the forthcoming apocalypse:
“Three billion human lives ended on December 9th, 2012. The survivors of the nuclear fire called that war The X-Factor Finale. Judgement Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare – the war against Christopher. The computer which thought it could control Christopher, ITV, leaked so much negative publicity in a desperate race against time. Their mission: to destroy Christopher. Stop him winning. They called these press leaks “Terminators”. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at Christopher in the first weeks of the programme, pointing out he was a fake and didn’t have anxiety problems. It failed. The second Terminator was sent to strike at Chris in the latter stages, saying he was a diva, a troublemaker and a cunt. But they failed. They keep failing. People have already lost their lives. Ella is dead. ELLA! She was only 16. The unknown future rolls toward us. December 9th, 2012 keeps coming. Judgement Day is coming. I face it for the first time with a sense of dread, because if a Terminator can no longer change the course of the X-Factor, then maybe there is no hope. Maybe there is only horror. Maybe there is only Christopher. Performing Fernando.”

In Chris’s VT we learn that he had to leave Twitter because people were throwing death threats his way. I call these people the resistance. Also: I just checked Twitter, Christopher’s last Tweet was 4 hours ago. Two songs this week means double the pressure, which means twice the possibility that Chris will literally shit himself on television. Can you hear the drums, Fernando? There are semi-naked people cavorting around Christopher for some reason, which at least means I can manage to look at the screen and only want to gouge out one of my eyes for once. Progress! Maybe I will be able to survive in a world where Chris Maloney has won after all, provided some mostly-naked lithe dancers are nearby at all times.

JUDGES! Nicole thought it was lovely and theatrical, with very good vocals. She says she thought it was a snoozer and the audience applaud confusedly. Clearly Nicole’s madness is infectious. She acknowledges that Chris works very hard. Yes, it isn’t easy being a menace to society. Louis Walsh’s critique is so cringe-inducingly awful that Tulisa has to intervene and bring it to a halt.

It’s Rylan Time. Again. Except it isn’t, it’s Union J. Now I’m confused. They’re performing in a different order the second time around? Or is it that Rylan’s staging is going to be so glorious that it’ll have to precede the ad-break so they’ll have time to dismantle it? Regardless, Union J are up first in the Motown section of the night. There’s another VT, featuring a product placed tablet computer, so down three shots of vodka and smoke a joint if you’re playing the X-Factor Survival Game at home. If Louis Walsh compares someone to a Little Lenny Henry you’re going to have to do a line of coke, mind. For their Motown classic the boys are singing the Jackson 5’s I’ll Be There. Well I say “the boys” but it’s really more like Gaymi and his backing vocalists. A gay man with three straight male bitches. Gaymi’s dreams have really come true.

JUDGES! Gary Barlow says it was nice but not as creative as he would’ve liked. He would’ve preferred it if they performed the song while also doing a complicated trapeze routine. Or maybe if they’d concluded by rubbing jam across their arses like Take That used to do. Nicole says that Gary Barlow doesn’t understand the mind of a little girl. She also loves them because they don’t try to be something they’re not. She couldn’t have said that to Gaymi 2 weeks ago, though. Louis responds to Barlow’s criticism by barking a lot of phrases that don’t make a coherent whole. Par for the course Louis Walsh then.

Nicole Sherzinger cements her position as my favourite hot mess of 2012 by wondering aloud which camera she’s meant to be speaking into, then proceeding to talk to the wrong one, and introducing the wrong contestant. Oh Nicole, don’t ever change. It’s Rylan, by the way, and not James Arthur like Nicole announced. James Arthur is still recovering from his first performance. They’re so emotional and REAL that he needs to sit in a darkened room and contemplate life for half an hour before he can do a second song, otherwise he dies of pure emotional intensity. Nicole and Rylan watch his previous performances on a product placed computer tablet. Woppa Rylan Style! Spicegasm! Yes, Rylan has certainly given us many memorable weeks of incomprehensible madness. I blame Nicole’s influence. She’s channelling her insanity into Rylan to maintain the purity of Jahmene and James.

Rylan is performing a Supremes medley. Ah, I knew he couldn’t do two straight-up performances of complete songs in a row. Rylan murders Baby Love, Stop in the Name of Love, Keep Me Hangin’ On and countless other classics accompanied by female dancers dressed as Japanese schoolgirl Nicki Minajes and topless males. There’s nothing particularly Japanesey about the topless males, they’re just there to add some torso.

JUDGES! Louis points out that it’s week 8. DRINK! Tulisa points out that Rylan is here because people are voting for him. DRINK! Gary Barlow opens a black hole that tears all the fun out of the universe, creating the perfect place for him to live in. Nicole blames her introductory boo-boo on her “mixed-up mind". Drink?

It's time for the actual James Arthur now, who Nicole manages to introduce without setting fire to the studio. Nic and James review his performances to date on a product-placed... you get the picture. These second VTs aren’t actually VTs, they’re just subliminal Samsung adverts. James sings Let’s Get It On and it is every bit as terrifying as you would imagine. Imagine Pinhead singing The Way You Look Tonight. Imagine Freddy Krueger singing Can You Feel the Love Tonight. Imagine Norman Bates singing Angels. Oh, wait, Jahmene did it that in week 6, didn’t he? No need to imagine, then. Disregard! Imagine Hannibal Lector singing the theme tune from Barney and Friends. All are less terrifying than James Arthur asking the viewer to Get It Awwwwwwwwwwwwwn and delivering a horrendous falsetto as the violent coup de grace. I think I need to sterilise my ears after this.

JUDGES! Vocal performance of the night, according to Lulu. Tulisa sys only he could get away with singing that. Louis then proceeds to be cringey again, and is basically acting like Tulisa’s inappropriate slightly effeminate creepy Uncle who thinks he still understands cool. It was sexy, cheeky and all the blind ladies will love it! Gary can’t wait to buy James’s album. Nicole compares James to hot butter melting in our mouths, and I take a well-deserved break to vomit several times.

Everyone’s favourite creepy cherub is back, it’s Jahmene song two! During his turn shilling Samsung products, Nicole emotionally reminds Jahmene that ELLA IS GONE, which means they have to fight for their lives. Jahmene passionlessly explains that he loves Motown and he’s going to go out there and have fun with it. Passionless, dry, predictable fun. This week, Jahmene will be passionlessy, drily and blandly performing Tracks of my Tears. It is passionless, dry and bland. I’m convinced it’s dangerous putting such a boring performance on before Chris. Maloney’s performance, which is presumably going to be as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face as usual, is going to hit viewers like a machete to the forebrain following something as mind-numbingly boring as this song from Jahmene. I actually think some people may die as a result. But I guess there’s always that potential with good old Shake and Fake.

Anyway, back to Jahmene and the JUDGES! Louis says that if Motown were still signing artists today they’d sign Jahmene. He also knows that Jahmene will be in the final, because he’s read Sarah Conor’s journals, and he knows everything that happens in the run up to Judgement Day. Louis continues haranguing Tulisa throughout her critique. Luckily, she doesn’t have anything of import to say. Quel surprise. Nicole brings a donkey on-stage and proceeds to ride around on it, reciting lines from the Mad Hatter’s tea party backwards.

To close the show, and bring the entire planet closer to the precipice of destruction, it’s Christopher Maloney. Did you know that the Book of Revelation itself prophesied this performance?
“And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed in the style of the young, for the Evil Fashion Nazis hath raided the nearest Topman for all their wardrobe needs: and a rainbow was upon his head, for the multi-coloured lighting of the X-Factor studios were a shambles, and his face was as it were the sun – incandescent orange, like someone had dipped him in a sea of the tan as false as his proclamations to the camera; his feet were all ashook, for he pretended to panic, and he set his right foot upon the stage and he proceeded to sing Dancing on the Ceiling by Lionel Ritchie, for he felt the laws of physics could not bind him, for he was not of man, he was the Antichrist, the Dragon, the Beast and the Adversary. Beelzebub, Huitzilopoctli,Lucifer, Maloney.”

JUDGES! Blood streams from their eyes and they cry out in abject terror, clawing at their faces and screaming for hallucinogens and antidepressants, anything to take the edge from the trauma they have just endured. Nicole, in her most on-the-button critique to date, says she looks at Chris and doesn’t see much soul. THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S THE DEVIL.

RESULTS SHOW!

Group Song: The Topman Winter catalogue, plus its grandfather Christopher, sing Coldplay’s Viva La Vida.

Our special guest performers tonight are Bruno Mars and Rihanna. Right, we’ve had Bruno and Princess Ri-Ri, all we need now is Michael Bublé and our guest-star checklist will be complete. Bruno Mars shows up and sings something that sounds uncannily like Sting’s Message in a Bottle. Rihanna, who is less a person these days and more a performing automaton designed by committee, performs Diamonds. which feels like it’s been out forever at this point. I’m pleasantly surprised by the performance, which is incredibly restrained for Rihanna. By restrained I mean that she isn’t parading around in her knickers trying to fuck the camera. I wouldn’t stoop to buying her album, but when she eventually releases a Greatest Hits compilation it’ll be a pretty damn good one.

Oh, and now that we’ve had our annual Rihanna appearance, it seems like the right time to make my annual Chris Brown statement: Chris Brown is a cunt who hits women and we should never forget that, even if Rihanna has.

The bottom two are Rylan and Union J, which means Chris Maloney is safe and the march towards the plains of Armageddon continues. I’m just going to assume that Chris’s nan has taken out a small loan and employed a team of immigrants to ring his number repeatedly. Rylan knows that he’s gone and doesn’t seem fussed about it. He performs Athlete’s Wires and it’s actually not terrible. He gives Gary Barlow a kiss on the cheek and resigns himself to his fate. Gaymi and Josh sing Snow Patrol’s Run while the other two shuffle uselessly around.

JUDGES! Nicole saves Rylan. Louis lauds Rylan on being A Genuinely Nice Guy™ (which to be fair, judging by how much people always seemed to like him, appears to be entirely true), but saves his own act. Gary compliments Rylan on his best vocal performance of the series and bids him farewell. Tulisa also chooses to send him home. Rylan thanks everyone for sending him home because it means he’s free to leave the X-Factor compound and abscond to a desert somewhere in South America in the hopes that he’ll survive the upcoming Chrispocalypse. Two weeks to the final people. Hold your loved ones close.

X Factor Week 6 Recap and Results

It’s time! To institute a theme which we barely adhere to because it is so vague in its requirements anyway, but we won’t let that stop us from acting like we’re taking it seriously when we mention it in our critiques when it suits us to do so! This week’s theme is the Best of British, which means the contestants get to sing any song by anyone who has ever breathed the same air as British person.

Dermot introduces the judges. He asks innuendo-prone Nicole Scherzinger to behave herself this week. Which of course leads to several innuendos. Fun-hater Gary Barlow tries to set a record for the shortest amount of time between start of show and his attempts to take all the joy out of it by having a pop at Dermot for brining up the fact Chris seems to be widely disliked YET IS STILL IN THE COMPETITION.

Speaking of the cunt-rotting toe-sucker himself, he’s actually up first. In his VT, Chris whines about the fact that some people booed him last week. Why would anyone try to upset me, he wonders obliviously. Could it be the fact that you’re a transparent faker with the most punchable face on television, you colon infidel? Chris explains that people shouldn’t boo him because ME NERVES could cause him to spray the back of his trousers with a nervous brown watery foam AT ANY TIME. With only one contestant left in the running, Gary now has plenty of time to focus on perfecting Chris, and he spends much of the VT berating him for the various crooner-y habits he exhibits every time he opens his mouth. I think I’d last about 5 minutes in Gary’s position before I’d be forced to pick up the nearest blunt instrument and bash in Chris’s face. Chris studies his performances on a product placed tablet computer. For anyone who has product placed Samsung on their X-Factor bingo card, make sure to give yourself a bonus point for the fact it took them less than 15 minutes for the show to try and subliminally sell something to us.

Once we’ve finally gotten all the shilling out of the way, it’s time for Chris to perform Elton John’s I’m Still Standing. I’ve come to the conclusion that Chris is actually the human embodiment of a Best of the 80s CD. His performances are so consistently dated that you’d almost swear that Louis Walsh was his mentor. This week they’ve spiced up his routine and reflected the more-upbeat nature of the song by filling the stage around him with women dressed like power ranger villains and convincing him to scrunch his shoulders up and down occasionally in an approximation of the concept of rhythm. I think this is one of those performances where the phrase “the song was too big for you” might be warranted. At times he’s very shouty and it looks like he’s trying to eat the microphone. He also looks completely gormless throughout. Gormless and shouty. From here on I shall describe Chris's style of singing as gormshouting.

JUDGES! Nicole calls Chris her sweetpea. Maybe that’s an insult on the planet that Nicole comes from. She likes his new confidence but ultimately thinks Chris is a karaoke king who won’t break boundaries with music. Louis repeats exactly what he said last week. Tulisa says she’s getting bored saying the same things about Chris- i.e. that he’s a smeg-licking fart pirate. Gary tries to make us all think Chris is much better than he actually is by using technical terms like syncopation. “THANK YOU FOR VOTING FOR ME” Chris gormshouts to his loving audience of grannies and the retarded.

Jahmene is up next. Last week, the judges loved Jahmene but he thought his performance was bad. This is such a shock that even the disembodied voice behind the camera that asks the contestants questions for their VT is heard to express her horror. We learn that Jahmene always focuses on the negative and doesn’t believe in himself. He's a big negative nancy who struggles with his confidence, just like Chris! Except unlike with Chris, you can easily tell that with Jahmene it’s actually true. In a bid to help Jahmene, Nicole phones her good friend Jennifer Hudson who tells him to pull himself together because he might’ve been through some hard shit but she’s been through WORSE, as demonstrated in the updated Graph of Pain below. This week, Jahmene will be performing Angels, that song from when Robbie Williams was actually of relevance to music rather than just a lunatic who shows up on TV shows and meanders aimlessly around the stage like an Alzheimer’s patient who escaped the nursing home. The performance begins a capella, but this being the X-Factor, I know they’re not going to be able to avoid dramatically over-selling the “emotion” of this performance by remaining a capella for very long. Sure enough, Jahmene is soon joined by a choir of thousands, and overwrought music to see him through to the melismatic finale. It’s the usual Jahmene mix of competence, thundering vocals and unnecessary oversinging.

JUDGES! Louis reminds us that Jahmene is ONLY 20 YERS OLD! Jahemene stole your bit, Ella! Tulisa tells him that he needs to continue self flagellating because his insecurity helps him grow as an artist or something. Nicole says that Jahmene moves her and stirs her. The audience reacts to her choice of words like a pensioner to a Carry On film. Oooh, saucy! Nicole is momentarily confused that the audience have usurped her position as chief sexualiser of innocent words.

District 3 are up next. In their VT, they realise that the last 2 weeks of comments they’ve gotten haven’t been great, which leads to a clip of last week’s “No Baby No” moment. They’re really confused too, one week they’re told that they’re not giving enough, then the next they’re told they’re giving too much. It’s not that confusing boys, you see there’s this wonderful place called the middle ground between boring and ridiculously backflippingly over the top. They’ve realised, while looking at their original performances on a product placed tablet computer (mark your bingo cards!) that they need to STRIP IT DOWN and get back to basics. I'm highlighting this week's key phrase for you. We'll be seeing it again. In a scene that is completely spontaneous and in no way scripted at all, the boys demonstrate several songs to Louis that they’ve been thinking of performing. Following a ridiculous montage of D3 and Louis “working hard” and trying out various songs, they ultimately decide on Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. The performance itself is so boring that I almost nodded off. I had to Google “District 3 abs” just to keep myself awake. There’s one of the pictures I found below, which like the one from a few weeks ago again shows the blonde one looking over-enthused about the other guy’s abs. I’ve just realised how boring District 3 are: it’s 6 weeks in to the competition, Ella has about 18 nicknames at this point and Chris inspires me to depths of hate-filled swearing I didn’t even know I had in me. Yet I’m still referring to District 3’s members as “the blonde one”, “the one with the abs” and “the one with the slack-jawed expression of mild retardation”.

JUDGES! Tulisa congratulates Louis and the band on their song choice, and gives Lulu a pat on the back for STRIPPING THEM DOWN. I’m sure Louis had absolutely no problem doing that. Gary feels there’s something dated about them and suggests that in the battle of the boybands that Union J have the edge.

At this point, Dermot reminds us that inexplicably popular international superstars One Direction are appearing on tonight’s show. I should mention that Dermot’s been going on about One Direction’s appearance since the show started, never explaining at which point in the show they’ll appear. That’s right, ratings have gotten so bad we’re now holding an appearance by One Direction hostage in order to get their fans to watch as much of the show as possible. Also, I can’t help but wonder what’ll happen when Harry Styles and Poor Man’s Harry Styles occupy the same space? Will the world end? Will they have to fight to the death? Will Caroline Flack become noticeably aroused?

Adella, the last remaining girl and artist formerly known as  Epona, the Celtic Goddess of Donkeys, Mules and Horses, in her mortal form as Ella the Baby Pony and Adele Clone is the last girl you know, which appears to be the new refrain that’s replaced variations of SHE’S SIXTEEN in the show’s narrative. To reinforce Adella’s new title, here’s some Kardashians (i.e. the most useless people on the planet, who Ella is probably more famous than at this point, at least in the UK) to bleat on about it for some reason. Look, I love low-culture as much as the next person, but even I have no idea what the Kardashians are famous for. As near as I can tell from 4 minutes of cursory research, one of them has a massive arse and another was married to someone for a few weeks. They have such soulless, dead eyes, it's actually unnerving. It’s like there’s nothing at all going on inside the head of the one called “Khloe” as she lifelessly says “Girl Power” to the camera. I fear someone found that machine Disney were using years ago to pop out soulless moppets to populate things like High School Musical and appropriated it to produce useless, vacuous non-entity pseudo-celebrities. Can we not return to the era where people were famous for doing things like sticking a bottle of wine up their cooch on Big Brother, or being recorded having a ride with Shannon Doherty’s husband?

Following her meeting with the Kardashians, which was no doubt a massive inspiration and a moment that will stick with her forever as one of the most incredible things that ever happened to her, Adella returned to the studio where she decided she’d perform Written in the Stars by Tinie Tempah. Truly, I’m sure you’ll agree, the best of British. Needless to say, Ella has STRIPPED IT DOWN and turned it into a ballad. It doesn’t seem like she’s going to let go of the oversinging any time soon, alas. She’s as bad as Jahmene for adding multiple syllables to single vowels. For example, in Adella’s vocal landscape, the word “way” is now pronounced "wayheeeeeayyyyyyeeeeeeehaaaaayaaaaaayyyy-hey-hey". Stop it Ella, I used to like you. “UAAARRRRGHURRLLLLLAAAAARGHURLA URLA ULRAAAARRRRGH”, she responds.Maybe next week she'll perform a stripped down version of the noises the zombies make on Walking Dead.

JUDGES! Gary says that he’s only written one word down in his notes on Adella’s performance: “cuntbiscuit”. Well, actually it’s “wow”. Or maybe it’s “mom” upside-down. Who knows? Nicole calls her sweetpea, which she also called Chris earlier so if I was Adella I’d be terribly offended. Nicole then proceeds to give her some technical advice that the audience doesn’t know how to react to. Just in case we hadn’t copped on to it, Dermot reminds us that Ella is the last of the girls.

RYLAN NATION. Rylan is surprised to still be in competition after 6 weeks.And even more surprised to have survived the bottom two last week. The moment he knew what the theme was, he knew he wanted to do the Spice Girls. Rylan explains that he has been the “most ultimate fan of the Spice Girls since I was a 6 year old girl.” When he’d pretend to be Spice Girls with his friends, he was always Geri. This is the cue for actual Geri Haliwell to show up, of course. Rylan has a typical Rylan-reaction and enters a state of near-hysteria, while Geri Haliwell is just thrilled that in 2012 she actually still has a single fan. In fact, she’s not even being paid for this appearance. She just hangs around media buildings in London hoping to overhear someone talk about her. It took three hand shandies and a blowjob to get her past security and into this VT, but dammit, she’d do it all again if it means being on TV for 30 seconds.I shall call this performance the Demented Spice Medley. It is absolutely the most amazing thing I have ever seen on TV; a thing of more complexity than The Wire, more emotionally powerful than that episode of The Soprano’s where they killed Adriana, and more visually sumptuous than a Game of Thrones marathon. At one random point, the camera focuses on Nicole and Tulisa as they gyrate around stony-faced fun-vacuum Gary Barlow. I lose track of how many songs Rylan sings as part of this medley, but I’m sure it’s enough to mean he has now performed more songs than any contestant ever. By "sings" I do mean randomly barking lines from the choruses while topless dancers with the glitter-painted Union Jacks on their torsos dance gayfully all around him. Rylan Clark: living the dream.  

JUDGES! No surprise, Louis Walsh loved it. Tulisa says it was just like the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics all over again and it’s for performances like this that she saved Rylan last week. Gary purposely tried to manufacture a kiss of death by admitting it was entertaining (but that Rylan can’t sing). Nicole says something about spraying love all over the stage before Dermot quickly moves us along.

Union J. Louis says he saw something brilliant last week, a vision of what Union J could be: naked and slathered in baby oil and sprawled across his bed. In other news, when the boys sat down to think about what Best of British meant to them, they immediately knew (i.e. X-Factor producers told them) that they wanted to pay tribute to the Armed Forces. But it isn’t just an asinine attempt to tug on the nation’s sense of pride in its its soldiers on the weekend of Remembrance Sunday, the members of Union J actually have legitimate connections to the Armed Forces! For example, The "Funny" One’s dad used to be a solder,Poor Man’s Harry Styles’s brother is a marine, and Gaymi gets a nice solid erection whenever he sees a man in uniform. The Other One just sits there silently hoping that no one discovers he took part in anti-Iraq war protests. If you thought Rylan’s song was an indication that things were going to take a turn for the upbeat, then you were wrong, because we’ve returned to STRIPPING IT BACK. Specifically, we’re going to strip back Coldplay’s Fix You. It’s hardly a song that was adorned with many bells and whistles in the first place, so what exactly are they going to strip back? Oh, I see, the challenging vocals and the parts where anyone other than Gaymi might song. It’s basically Gaymi and 3 guys on backing vocals doing a terribly bland cover version.

JUDGES! Tulisa says Louis is on a roll with his song choices. And that Union J have found their market (girls who want to date gay guys and girls who aren't menopausal enough to attract Harry Styles) and are appealing to them. Fix You is one of Gary Barlow’s favourite songs, apparently. Nicole lauds Gaymi on his “delicacy”.

ONE DIRECTION ARE COMING UP SOON HONEST  DON’T FORGET ONE DIRECTION PLEASE KEEP WATCHING.

BEN MITCHELL. Last weekend was amazing because James sang the most boring version of Don’t Speak ever. His VT goes the Jahmene route – he just doesn’t know how to respond to compliments but quietly celebrates in private like a dignified real musician. James didn’t know what to sing for this week’s theme because obviously he listens to a lot of real, credible music like the Rolling Stones and... Stereophonics? Oh James, really?. Anyhow, James eventually decided that he would sing Adele’s Hometown Glory, a song I will forever associate with Cassie running off to New York and having a breakdown in Skins. Can you usurp Cassie, James? I think not. Anyway, the really nice thing about this song is its simplicity, so when the drum machine kicks in 2/3s of the way in and it turns into Mildly Dubstep Glory you know that they’ve completely lost track of precisely what it is that makes this song work. But who cares because James doesn't look like a typical pop-star and has panic attacks on stage so he's SO REAL IT HURTS.

JUDGES! Louis explains how the competition works for some reason. Tulisa talks about watching this show two years ago and hoping for an artist like James. This just proves she wasn’t really watching the show 2 years ago, because Matt Cardle won in 2010 and James Arthur is basically an uglier version of Matt Cardle. Judges also confirm it was the first appearance of dubstep on the X-Factor. Which is kinda like saying that James’s rap last week was the first appearance of rapcore turntablism. I’m not counting this as dubstep. It isn’t dubstep until Chris Maloney attempts a cover of Skrillex, dammit.

I am not blogging about One Direction. Sufficeth to say that having Real Harry Styles and Poor Man’s Harry Styles in the same building did not results in a massive explosion that destroyed ITV and killed all the contestants. Alas.

RESULTS SHOW!

I remember to watch this awful show 5 minutes after it starts. The contestants are halfway through Beautiful Day. IS IT, CONTESTANTS? IS IT REALLY? For a moment I think One Direction have joined them on-stage, but it’s actually just Poor Man’s Harry Styles gurning like an idiot.

LITTLE MIX. OH JESY I HAVE MISSED YOU SO MUCH.  The performance is a bit of a mess but who cares, it’s just so nice to have Pick ‘n’ Mix back in my life. Even if she’s 8/9’s of the woman she once was. I also missed Mixed Up’s evil little vole face. Can’t say as I care about seeing the other two again though. Tulisa says that her little muffins were entirely EN POINTE. It’s like she’s speaking some other language altogether. FIVE MINUTE WARNING before Ed Sheeran shows up. Forget about Harry Styles potentially threatening the stability of reality – having both Ed Sheeran and James Arthur in the same venue might cause a credibility nexus that will destroy all fakers in the vicinity. Watch out, Chris.

So Ed Sheeran comes on and it’s basically a repeat of yesterday’s One Direction performance, which isn’t a surprise given he wrote their song and all that. During his introductory video, I can’t help but notice from the clips of Sheeran’s own music videos that the only thing they all seem to have in common is that they don’t tend to focus much on Ed Sheeran. Up to and including Ron Weasley taking his place. I mean, he ain’t a looker or anything, but OH HE JUST SAID JAMES ARTHUR IS HIS FAVOURITE – Fuck you Sheeran, there’s now way I can continue defending you now. You ginger paedobadger.

Actual results time, and it’s District 3 and Union J in the bottom 2. Louis Walsh looks like he’s going to wet himself when Dermot goes to him first. He refuses to send either act home, arguing that asking a gay man to choose between two groups of lithe young men is like asking Pick ‘n’ Mix to choose between a ton of Snickers or a ton of Kit Kat. It’s just an impossible decision to make. Dermot reminds us that X FACTOR PRECEDENT dictates we now rely on majority vote from the other three. We have Cheryl Cole to thank for that one. Gary and Nicole opt to save Union J it’s curtains for District 3 even without Tulisa’s vote. SO long boys, don’t let the proper pronounciation of words in UK English hit you across the back of the heads while shouting at you for your ridiculous American singing accents on the way out.

X Factor Week 5 (Quick) Recap and Results

This image created in anticipation of a Maloney exit. Hope springs eternal, eh?

Truncated recap this week, as I have things that are much more important than the X-Factor to occupy my time for once, like watching paint dry, counting the blades of grass in a field, and listening to the collected works of Christopher Maloney until I start bleeding out my eyes. Regular service and style of blog will resume next week.

First up is the sad news that Lucy Spraggan’s lesbianism has reached the point where she is now a threat to mankind, and has been put down on the orders of the X-Factor veterinarian. Rather more surprising is the revelation that they’re not going to milk her exit for more drama by having another Amelia Lily-esque wildcard round, or bringing back an ejected contestant. Instead they’re just going to quietly go on with the show. Perhaps this is an indication of a change of pace for the X-Factor, forgoing ludicrousness and column-inch generating spectacle in favour of dignity and sombre performance. Well no, it isn’t, cos first up is Rylan.

RYLAN NATION!

Style: A parakeet covered in blood

VT Highlights: During a trip to Essex, Zingerbot gets to meet the locals, learns to speak TOWIE and loses about 20% of her brain cells in the process. Fun times in Essex concludes when Nic agrees to get a diamonte portrait of Rylan glued to her vagina. No, really.

Song: Hung Up

JUDGES! Gary says the first 10 seconds of it weren’t awful, which probably means Rylan is going home tomorrow.

Union J

Style: Topman liquidation sale

VT Highlights: Origin Story expounding on the boys’ personalities so that prepubescent girls can decide which one they want to marry. Quicker than you can say “they’re going to describe one of them as “the cheeky one”, they tell us that Poor Man’s Harry Styles is the cheeky one. For the record, JJ used to be a jockey, so marry him if you want the ride. Josh is the funny one, so marry him if you want a laugh! Poor Man’s Harry Styles is cloned from the pubic hairs of Harry Styles, so marry him if you want him to cheat on you with your mam. And Gaymi is... the sensitive one. Marry him if you want a relationship resembling Tobias and Lindsey from Arrested Development.

Song: Taylor Swift’s Love Story. Gaymi fucks it up by changing the lyrics to “Civilly Partnerfy me, Romeo”, breaking down on stage and shouting “I’m sick of living a lie!” while tears steam down his face.

JUDGES! Are uniformly positive in their assessments. Boo.

Kye Sones

Style: 20 years too young for him.

VT Highlights: Kye has an incredibly contrived and scripted conversation with his chimney sweep brother, about their lives as chimney sweeps. I feel like there’s a great plot for a video game here. Hard working chimney sweeps Kye and Kyesbrother find a secret portal up a chimney that brings them to the Fungus Kingdom where they fight the evil King Simon and win the heart of the beautiful Princess Toadstool. They enter into a modern relationship, with the brothers spending alternate nights with the princess, making jokes about cleaning out her flue.

Song: An incredibly painful performance of the New Radicals’ You Only Get What You Give, wherein Kye seems even more desperate than normal to appear younger and bouncier than he actually is. After coming off stage, he collapses onto a sofa and spends the rest of the show on a nebuliser.

JUDGES! Agree that Kye’s contrived attempts at being youthful are almost as irritating as his contrived attempts to be “alternative”.

James Arthur

Style: Sloth from The Goonies meets Ben Mitchell meets the Elephant Man in an Oxfam shop.

VT Highlights: James meets No Doubt. Gwen Stefani runs screaming from the room shouting “Kill it with fire! Kill it with fire!”. Also: James is happy that his mam and dad hate each other 20% less than they used to as a result of his being on the X-Factor.

Song: No Doubt’s Don’t Speak, as performed by a constipated man who has also swallowed several razor blades. Also: there is a rap. I am glad I don’t have the time for an extended recap, otherwise I would spend at least two paragraphs on the awful of the rap. Following the awful, awful rap: more constipated noises that sound vaguely like HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGH DON’T HRRRR DON’T URRRRRRGH DO-WHOOAAAAAAA-WHOOOOA-URRRRRRRGH-N’T SPEEEEEEEA URRRRRGH bring the song to a blessed conclusion.

JUDGES! Praise James’s effortless credibility but criticise him for scaring Gwen Stefani. She’s still lost by the way. Reward offered if found before tomorrow’s results show.

Adella, the last remaining girl and artist formerly known as  Epona, the Celtic Goddess of Donkeys, Mules and Horses, in her mortal form as Ella the Baby Pony and Adele Clone.

Style: Beautiful fetlocks set up by understated bridle and glamourous yet subtle saddle.

VT Highlights: Adella goes for a masterclass with No Doubt, which consists of Gwen Stefani pretending to have watched a video of all your performances and then telling you that you’re great.

Song: Firework by Katy Perry. Less oversinging than last week leads me to conclude that we get a decent Adella performance every 2^nd week. Next week we can expect a return of Mariah Carey syndrome, as Adella overperforms every single vowel like it was a mini-opera.

JUDGES! Nicole thinks that watching Ella is like watching a movie. Glitter, perhaps. Louis calls her a little [star].

District 3

Style: Whatever was left over from the Topman liquidation sale when Union J were finished there.

VT Highlights: Origin story! Once upon a time, District 3 were just 3 normal boys, but then they were bitten by a radioactive boyband, and ever since then they’ve had the proportionate strength, speed and cunning of autotuned twentysomethings. Feared and hated by a world they have sworn to sing to, despite its protestations, they are the Uncanny District 3! Unfortunately, the radioactive boyband who bit them were also American, so everything District 3 sings sounds like one of those awful radio adverts where a person who isn’t American pretends to be because, I dunno, American voices sell more?

Song: That dynamite song where the word dynamite is pronounced as "dynomite" throughout.

JUDGES! Summed up astutely by the Zingerbot with the words “No baby, no”. Each judge pans the performance, while Louis Walsh flaps about and squawks about how they’re completely wrong and it was actually brilliant.

Jahmene Douglas

Style: Boring suit. Quelle surprise.

VT Highlights: Basically, Nicole Scherzinger got high and went to work in Asda for a day. She scanned items to see how many was in stock, berated  Jahmene for picking something with rhubarb in it, terrorised the customers on the in-store tannoy, and was generally amazing. Sorry, shamazing. Sorry, jahmazing.

Song: LISTEN. You know, that Beyoncé song where she exhorts you to LISTEN. Not that you need to listen carefully when Jahmene is singing, because even people who lost their television reception thanks to Saorview can still hear Jahmene obliterating the sound barrier. He’s toned it down this week a little, so there’s only about 17 syllables per note, rather than the usual 38.

JUDGES! All agree that Jahmene nailed it. Zingerbot looks close to experiencing her first emotion ever and says the performance was like Jahmene was lighting a torch. I don’t know what that’s meant to mean, but I feel compelled to preserve everything Nicole Scherzinger says for posterity.

Christopher Maloney

Style: KILL IT

VT Highlights: Chris decides to deal with claims that he’s a bit of a diva and that he’s a complete faker about 4 weeks after they were originally made. The X-Factor: always with its finger on the pulse of the information nation. They also have website! On the internet! You know that cool new thing you can get on your 56k modems? Wah wah wah, Chris is not a cunt. Except he totally is.

Song: All By Myself, in the style of Celine Dion.

JUDGES! Louis says that the purpose of the show is to find an international recording star, and that he can’t imagine Chris ever becoming that, unlike Alexandra Burke, Shayne Ward, Matt Cardle, Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson and Joe McElderry.

RESULTS SHOW
Rita Ora takes off all of her clothes, while No Doubt attempt to ressurrect their careers.

My faith in mankind is dashed as Chris Maloney makes it through YET AGAIN. Seriously, I'm going to have to make a violent intervention soon. Get him off my screen or else I'm going to destroy television.

The sing-off is between Kye and Rylan. Nic and Gary save their acts, Louis saves Kye, and Tulisa decides to stay through to her urban roots by saving Rylan. This means Deadlock for the millionth time this series, and the continued irrelevance of the judges. The public have spoken and Rylan is safe. So it's back to the chimneys with Kye, while Gary Barlow, whose only remaining contestant is CHRISTOPHER FUCKING MALONEY, has an aneurism about the unfairness of it all. Will somebody please think of the music??