X-Factor 2012 Final: Part Two

IT'S TIME! TO EMELI! SANDÉ!

The second night of this extended abortion opens with an autotuned-to-fuck pre-recorded group performance. Not present: Christopher Maloney. This isn’t exactly a surprise, because demons tend to return to hell after an exorcism, after all. Or in this case, get thrown onto a bus back to Liverpool because you got pissed and called a fellow contestant a cunt. Also not present: MK1. Maybe they quit in solidarity with The Camp Orange One. Or maybe they're just too busy keeping it real, or undertaking a quest for Tulisa's urban roots or something. With those crazy cats from MK1, it could literally be ANYTHING. It’s worth noting that this group performance is preceded by a recap of last night’s show. After the group performance, there’s... another recap of last night’s show. And to think, people are accusing the X-Factor of being creatively bankrupt.

Jahmene is up first. The premise of the intro video is, yet again, let’s have the contestant sit down and watch their old performances on a product-placed Samsung tablet. I don't know what I'm getting for Xmas, but I think if anyone gets me a Samsung tablet I'll break into a cold sweat and have a panic attack due to negative associations. Jahmene’s going to sing Angels again, because he felt really special when he sang it for the first time. Also: his mother and stuff. Plus it might purify the venue in case there are any malingering spirits left behind after Maloney’s exit. Wail wail, point skyward, high note, screamy shout, choir, HRNRRRRRRRRRRRRGH: Jahmene’s performance summarised in 10 words.

The Judges all say positive things because it’s the fucking final and they’re hardly going to start telling the truth now, are they?

James Arthur decides that he’ll treat us all to another performance of Let’s Get It On. Typing the words James Arthur and Let’s Get It On in the same sentence makes me throw up a little. If anything, it’s even worse than the first time, because you know what to expect: female dancers cavorting with the swamp beast before he heads over to the judges table and attempts to seduce Nicole and Tulisa. Don’t fall for it girls, he just wants to lead you back to his nest where he’ll lay eggs underneath your eyelids. That’s how whatever species James Arthur is reproduces. There’s the blood-curdling falsetto at the end that signifies James’s orgasm and it's safe to listen again.

Then it’s time for several time-wasting interludes to allow the votes to rack-up. First there’s a recap of everything the judges did this series. Oh look, there’s Mel B being a cunt. Come back next year love, please. There’s Rita Ora, during a rare moment of not having sex with someone who isn’t her boyfriend. And there’s Leona Lewis, watching paint dry and wondering how she can ever be that interesting.  Eventually the Judges recap ends and it’s time for One Direction to return to the fetid womb from whence they emerged. Remember when this show was able to sustain its ratings on its own, and didn’t need to rope in its most popular progeny to give things a boost every two weeks?

Anyway, they’re singing some song that’s probably about being in love with an average girl, and all the ways in which she’s average and if you listen to the lyrics SHE COULD BE YOU! And they’d never pressure you into having sex, because they have an image as non-threatening boyfriends to maintain. SHE COULD BE YOU! IMAGINE SHE’S YOU! BUY BRANDED MERCHANDISE AND IMAGINE THE BOYS LOVING YOU! Upon closer listen, I think this song is actually about how One Direction are totally cool with having sex with you but only if you want to move at your own pace, baby. If you're ready for that, I'll totally pull out and cum on your belly, honest. I should write lyrics for boybands. Look at Liam Payne with his tattoo and shaved head. He’s like the Phil Mitchell of One Direction. Zayn’s microphone stops working because the sound engineers at Manchester Central are awful. Either that or they’ve just been overcome by the sheer talent on display. Niall Horan still hasn’t learned how to sing. Insert joke about Harry Styles and a middle aged woman... here. And that's everyone covered except for Louis. No one gives a fuck about Louis.

Another time-wasting diversion! WILL THIS NEVER END??? Here’s some footage of the finalists at 10 Downing Street to turn on the Xmas Lights. There’s David Cameron, desperately trying to be seen. This is like all those times when Tony Blair was a media whore doing things like appearing on The Simpsons, The Catherine Tate Show, Britain’s Next Top Model and Location, Location, Location. Except Cameron doesn’t have the Blair flair for self-promotion so the best he could manage is this appearance on a much-derided show that’s well past its prime. Must try harder, Dave.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, MORE FILLER. Here’s reclusive singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé. She doesn’t get out of the house often so you should take a few minutes to rewatch this performance a few times because who knows when the next opportunity to see Emeli Sandé on your television will come. Well actually, I have it on good authority that she’s appearing in a special feature for Tonight with Trevor McDonald about the dangers of celebrity overexposure.  She recorded it in between appearances on Ear to the Ground, where she’ll be dosing some cattle, and Panorama Investigates, where she’ll be looking at the recent Loyalist drama in Belfast.

Believe it or not this thing still isn’t over. At this point I have an IV line pumping pure ethanol into my system. It’s the only way to get through it. Winner’s song time! Jahmene gets to perform the Beatle’s Let It Be, while James Arthur gets to sing Impossible, by Shontelle. Yes, there was a singer named Shontelle. Her second album, magnificently, was named Shontelligence. I sincerely hope that James Arthur’s albums are half as amazingly titled. I think Jahmene sings his song better than James, or it might just seem that way because of the relative difference in quality between a song written by McCartney-Lennon and one written by the team of industry drones responsible for writing songs for someone named fucking Shontelle.

Time for more filler! Here’s Rihanna! Maybe she’s come back because she realised she didn’t take off enough clothes the last time she performed (i.e. just two fucking weeks ago). Remember last year, when Coldplay did an entire set and led thousands of people in a hands-aloft sing-along of some of their most beloved tracks, magic wristbands twinkling in the night? Yeah, this is nothing like that. It’s Rihanna lifelessly doing a ballad and following it up with We Found Love and leaving her clothes on. At no point does any aspect of the performance resemble a live sex show. What a massive disappointment.

It’s finally time to announce the winner. I feel like this final started a lifetime ago. Nations have risen and fallen, babies have been born, and Rita Ora has had sex with seventeen people in the time it's taken to get to this point. So congratulations to James Arthur, the first person who’s ever been in a sing-off to have won the X-Factor, random-trivia fans. Dermot talks to Jahmene, wonders how he’s feeling. Jahmene encourages James to “use this platform wisely” as though winning the X-Factor is some dangerous weapon of mass destruction. Which I guess it is.

Thank you to the five people who read this, I love you all. Well, I love three of you. I can’t stand one and I’m indifferent about another. See you all next year for what will surely be the final series of this fucking travesty of a sham of a mockery of a television show. I anticipate we’ll have a new presenter, Emeli Sandé, and a new judging panel, made up of 4 clones of Emeli Sandé.

Here's another picture of Emeli Sandé to keep you going until you next see her, at 11pm when she presents the weather. (Heavy showers and the chance of some Emeli Sandé)

X-Factor 2012 Final: Part One

IT’S TIME! TO FACE! THE FINAL!

I had to endure a Michael Bublé cover of All I Wannt for Xmas Is You earlier. I described it on Facebook as “soul-crushingly, bowel liquefyingly awful”. However, I realise that it was probably necessary to listen to such horrors to steel myself for the four-hour, two-night finale to the X-Factor 2012. And what a year it’s been for the X-Factor. The producers actually managed to make the audition stages of the show worse by implementing insipid TOWIE-inspired scripted backstage footage that made the previous editorial approach seem raw and uncut. A humanity-hating Melanie B was the only bright spot in a parade of impotent guest judges drafted in to replace Kelly Rowland when Plan B of Dannii’ll-Come-Back-Won’t-She? fell through. Ratings have fallen dramatically, there’s an uninspired judging panel whose only tolerable member is a bat-shit crazy ex-Pussycat Doll, and the finalists are a limp choice of three different shades of blandness. And then there’s the small matter of Christopher Maloney being Satan, of course.

The finale is live from Manchester, and that’s one massive fucking crowd pretending to enjoy Dermot O’Leary’s extended dancing shtick. From there it’s a quick segue onto the finalists, led by Rylan singing Gangnam Style, performing a mash-up of all our favourite performances from the show this year. Look, there’s Union J and District 3 on scooters for some reason! Remember District 3? Remember Jade Ellis? Of course you don’t, me neither! Oh look, it’s the second coming of Epona, the Celtic Goddess of Donkeys, Mules and Horses, in her mortal form as Ella the Baby Pony and Adele Clone. Kye stares disdainfully into the camera with eyes that cry, “Why didn’t you love me, you cancer-riddled testicles?”

We’re introduced to the finalists. Jahmene tells us that he is very excited to be there, while showing all the excitement of a rigid 3-day old corpse. Shrek receives a ridiculously applause-filled reception after he mutters something stupid from his sloth-hole. Chris Maloney says something about his nan, probably.

Nicole introduces her lamb chop Jahmene for his first performance. This being the final, they are of course bringing each of the contestants back home and asking them to bid farewell to their former lives... for 18 months until their albums are on sale in bargain bins and they have to go back with their tails between their legs. Given how deformed he is, I imagine that in James’s case “tail between his legs” probably isn’t a metaphor. Anyway, Jahmene goes back to visit the dungeon he was raised in by his father, Josef Fritzel. “And that’s the spot where he turned a blow torch on you!” squeals Nicole as Jahmene does his “Heh Huh” laugh of emotional deadness. Then it’s back to Asda! Look, there’s Pauline who spits into the bread! There’s Sophie who does the tills, but today she’s on hygiene so she hates the world. If you cross her today, that bitch will cut you. And here’s Jahmene’s church, which represents the part of his life that’s obviously very dear to him but which the cynic in me says the producers have deliberately tried to hide or downplay a wee little bit. Then it’s on to to sing for more people in the centre of Swindon than are actually present in Manchester Central for the actual final.

Song-time, and Jahmene’s predictably tedious screech-fest is Move On Up. Upbeat Jahmene for the final? What a risky endeavour. But don’t worry, it’s still Jahmene by the books – there’s wailing and screeching and notes that could shatter the firmament arranged incompetently and delivered with all the subtlety of a kick to the fanny-flaps.

JUDGES! You’re in the final says Louis. You have so much soul, unlike that demon hell beast Christopher Maloney. You’re the little guy from Asda and you’re like a little Luthor Vandross. If you’re playing the X-Factor drinking game at home, you are now dead. Gary Barlow says some words but no one notices because he’s a boring shit. Tulisa is too busy crying about her massive flop of a debut album to offer any criticism. Nicole shouts a lot of words and exhorts Manchester to show some love. When Chris comes on I hope she encourages them to show their disdain. Then it’s over to Caroline Flack and Pastor Tim for further inane chat. Maybe when Chris transforms into his true form later in the evening Pastor Tim can stage an exorcism and save us all. Assuming that Caroline Flack hasn't slept with him by then and polluted his soul.

Speaking of the Evil One, it’s time for Chris’s intro VT! Just six months ago he was working in a call centre in Liverpool. And in just six months time he’ll be back there! Call Centre is probably a euphemism for Premium Rate Sex Chat. Chris was fired for being too weird. “What are you wearing?” his callers would enquire. “A saucy French beret and THE PULPED FLESH OF MY ENEMIES”, he would respond. Oh look, here’s Baba Yaga herself, Chris’s Nan. And Gary’s there too. Then they all have a nice cup of tea and a sit down and it is literally the most boring thing you have ever seen on television, unless watching a 76 year-old converse about sausage rolls with the lead singer of a 90s boyband is your idea of a good time. Then it’s on to Chris’s performance for the Liverpudlians, and we get to meet some of the fuckers who’ve been voting for him. “Go away with your hip-hop, we want to listen to Chris”, says a scarily deranged looking woman, who is also the only one under 60 at the free gig. "I'm voting for Christopher Maloney because I know his mum and his nan and I know everyone they know because we got to the same bingo”, adds a random pensioner. Is this show even trying to capture a youth audience any more?

Performance time! The staging sees Chris emerging from a massive tape deck. STRAIGHT OUTTA THE 80s, BITCHES. As Chris parades about singing the soundtrack to Flashdance, I can only cower in fear at the knowledge that there’s another 90 minutes of this to sit through. And a whole other 120 minutes for show two! KILL ME NOW. His performance would be much more watchable if it saw him attempt to recreate key scenes from Flashdance, such as sitting in a chair and emptying the contents of a suspended bucket of water all over himself. It’d be even more watchable still if someone replaced the water with sulphuric acid. It’s worth noting that at no point do Chris’s nerves threaten to overwhelm him, despite the fact that he’s singing for 10,000 people. Empirical proof that the X-Factor is both more effective and faster acting at treating anxiety than a course of SSRIs.

MeNan berates Chris for being a loser

JUDGES! I think Louis Walsh is purposely hitting the clichés at this point, as he spouts a series of predictable Louisisms. But either way, DRINK! Nicole completely avoids saying anything about the performance, while Tulisa blows her nose into a Kleenex while muttering "Number...35?". Caroline Flack asks Chris’s nan if she’s delighted at how her evil scheme has come together. She throws her head back, cackles wildly and masturbates with a crucifix while singing, “Come little children, I'll take thee away, Into a land of enchantment”.

James Arthur! Went home to “the North East”. Are we unable to specify exactly where James is from? Is he actually a person in witness protection wearing prosthetics to look that ugly? Awww, James has a nan too! And she isn’t evil like Chris’s one. James and Nicole visit his old bedsit, which is about the size of Nicole’s shoe closet. Girls cry when they see James Arthur as he walks about “the North East”. Possibly because they didn’t think anyone could be that hideous. Then he sings for several thousand people in an undisclosed location while Nicole grabs her crotch and twerks out to the dubstep Adele. Apparently that’s what the kids are into these days.

The performance begins with a horribly contrived opening tracing James from backstage to front-of-house so he can inflict a Bublé-ish interpretation of Feeling Good upon us. Look, it didn’t work when Frankie Cocozza did it and it doesn’t work when someone only marginally less irritating does it. Needless to say, about halfway through, Bublé Feeling Good turns into Poor Man’s Dubstep Feeling Good, and to be honest I’m completely torn on which approach is worse. Maybe they’re just two very different kinds of horrible. Like getting a splinter in your urethra compared with being arse-raped by a broken glass bottle. James gasps and wails and makes nasally sounds and random noises that Thom Yorke would be proud of.

JUDGES! Louis manages to use about 80% of his screentime before making a clichéd remark, which I think is some kind of record. Tulisa says that it’s a matter of patriotism to vote for James, or something. Then she reminds us that The Female Boss is currently on sale at just 1.99. Gary fawns over James and makes it clear he thinks he’s worth about 50 Chris Maloneys. Nicole goes the Louis Walsh route of using the song lyrics/title in her critique but does so to such an extent that she might as well just be reciting the entire songbook.

I didn’t pay attention to the going-into-the-audience part, as I was too busy being emotionally dead following the pure raw talent of James Arthur. If the previous two Caroline Flack: LIVE! Segments were anything to go by, it probably involved talking to either Bishop Desmond Tutu or the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley.

Kelly Clarkson is up now to promote her Greatest Hits album. Kelly Clarkson sings over a montage of black and white highlights from the series. It’s vaguely like that bit at the Oscars where someone wails while all the dead people’s faces flash up on-screen and the audience prepares to care about the ones who weren’t famous actors or directors. Look love, I don’t care how great a boom mic assistant operator you are, you weren’t Liz Taylor. Out of the corner of my eye Kelly looks vaguely like a Pregnant Anna Paquin, so I’m going to pretend I live in a parallel world where Sookie Stackhouse left the vampires of Bon Temps behind to pursue a career in music. This, in turn, reminds me to Google pictures of Ryan Kwanten's arse, which I haven't done in a while.

It’s duets time now. They’re keeping the tradition they started last year of having the contestants perform with their mentors rather than any of the celebrity guests. Which is a pity, because I really would’ve loved to have seen Chris sing What's My Name with Rihanna. This also means that Nicole will be singing twice. I sure hope she’s en pointe tonight. The VT introducing Jahmene and Nic’s duet is all about how nice Nicole is. They’re singing The Greatest Love Of All together, or they would be if someone hadn’t fucked up and forgotten to turn Nicole’s microphone on. Therefore, she has to make a grab for Jahmene’s mic and share it with him, thus ruining whatever outstanding masterpiece  of choreography they had in mind for this limp ballad. Someone’s being fired and/or boiled alive in Chris’s Nan’s cauldron for this.

Next up is Gary and Christopher. They’re singing Take That’s Rule the World, of course. See, as he gets closer to victory, Chris’s ultimate goal is within his grasp, and his desire to conquer all is spilling over into his performances. HE WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD. Imagine a world where Dread Emperor Chris is in charge. Innocent people living under the yoke of 7 foot tall, orange-skinned shock troops, with power ballads as national anthems. Anyone who listens to any song that originates from 1990 onwards immediately sent to the blast furnaces used to manufacture replacement hips for MeNan.

The unholy offspring of James and Nicole

Finally, it's James and Nicole! Which means another VT about how great Nicole is. The moral of the VT is that James loves Nicole, basically. After watching it, I think I’m going to write some fanfic about Nicole and James now. Imagine what strange children they’d have. They perform Make you Feel My Love. Sparks fall from the ceiling and slither about the stage and for a moment I think it’s the rain of fire foretold by Revelation until I remember it’s just shitty pyrotechnics.

While the X-Factor producers fix the results to give them their preferred ending, Rita Ora shows up to perform a song surrounded by burnt out cars. So basically like a post-apocalyptic scene? X-Factor staging guys, you’re seriously making this too easy for me. It’s like you actively want me to recycle me Chris-ageddon jokes. But poor TRita Ora. She had a tough week, as some Kardashian waste-of-space she’d been dating revealed she’d cavorted with 50,000 other men or something. And then implied she’d aborted their child. Frankly, if Rita Ora aborted a Kardashian foetus then I personally think we should be applauding her. The entire episode is yet more evidence for the prosecution in Common Sense vs. Celebrities Using Twitter.

Then it’s Kylie Minogue’s turn to promote a Greatest Hits album. Or an orchestral album. Or whatever the fuck it is. This being Kylie, it is of course the campest orchestra ever, featuring light up fibre-optic cellos that are probably being played by models in speedos or something. If you listen to Kylie’s performance backwards, it’s actually an impassioned plea to bring back Dannii Minogue as the voice of occasional constructive criticism on this show.

RESULTS! Jahmene is safe! James s safe! It’s an all-Nicole final. Chris is devastated and his Nan disowns him on-stage. But the world is safe! And the rest of this blog is safe from end-of-the-world jokes! REJOICE! Jahmene picks up James and spins him around for some reason. Maybe’s he’s drunk. Nicole sure sounds like she’s drunk. Maybe we’re all drunk! I know I am! And that's for the best, because there’s a whole other 2 hour freakshow to get through before I can get my life back. YAY. Fuck my life.

X Factor 2012 Semi Finals

IT’S TIME! To shine bright! LIKE A DIAMOND!

This week’s themes are “Songs for You” and “Songs to Get You to the Final” which even by the X-Factor’s brilliant standards is pretty damn vague. What if Union J decided that the song to get them to the final is a thumping cover version of Smell Yo Dick? James Arthur could choose to perform an arms-aloft, lighters-in-the-air, stripped back guitar-driven acoustic version of Du Hast. Frankly the vagueness of the themes could lead to utter chaos. Anyway, the first half of this exercise in predictable nonsense will be the Song for You, which is dedicated to a special someone in the contestants’ lives. I already know right now that Union J’s song is going to be dedicated to THE GIRLS. Just wait.

Christopher Maloney is up first, ready to batter You Raise Me Up about the face until it no longer resembles anything approaching the song it once was. Needless to say, Chris is dedicating his performance to Me Nan, the evil bitch who’s responsible for dragging Christopher to the auditions and ruining all of our lives. Fuck you, Nan. Nan is a haggard old crone who cavorted with the darkest of magicks in order to summon a juvenile hell demon from beyond the walls of the ninth circle of the underworld. That demon grew up to become the shatterer of worlds, lord of darkness, prince of torment himself, Christopher Maloney.

I’ve been further scrutinising the Book of Revelation and other apocalyptic texts for signs of the forthcoming Chrispocalypse. Did you know that 28 Days Later is actually a documentary from the future? The opening scenes occur just one month after Maloney’s grim victory. Anyway, Chris’s performance is the sort of overwrought shit you’ve come to expect from the emotionally-void ballad queen. He stares earnestly into the camera, doing his best approximation of feelings while secretly plotting where he’s going to build the furnaces he’ll use to burn the corpses of his enemies. Towards the end, a choir appears, and Me Nan descends from the ceiling in full-on angel regalia. Chris catches her and they embrace. He sprouts a pair of fangs as his face contorts into a vampiric nightmare, and proceeds to drain Me Nan of several pints of blood.

JUDGES! All three judges take the if-we-compliment-Chris-maybe-his-fans-will-think-he’s-safe route. I hope it works.

Sexual terrorist Jahmene Douglas is up next. What song could come from his heart? Oh, it’s a song for his dead brother. Great.  How am I meant to make fun of Jahmene when he keeps using his VTs to reflect on what has officially been A Really Shitty Life™? Oh wait, I’m a horrible person, that’s how. So Jahmene is singing I Look to You in Dedication for his brother, who is dead and thus does not exist anymore and thus isn’t aware that Jahmene is singing this song for him. Wasted opportunity, Jamelia. You could’ve dedicated this song to Chris’s Nan instead, thus making the public inexplicably more likely to vote for you. This being Jahmene, the song is so loud that his brother actually returns from the dead, approaches him disinterestedly and says “Give it a rest, mate”. Though actually, as it progresses I have to admit it’s not as loud as usual and somehow less effective for it. Like, normally when Jahmene sings I have to take refuge behind several solid wooden objects to avoid feeling like my bowels are being blasted with an experimental sonic weapon. This week, I just feel like I have two speakers strapped to my ears while a gorilla punches me in the stomach.

JUDGES! Nicole shudders her way through a barrage of questionable tears and gets an Awww from the easily manipulated Awwdience. Seizing her moment, she then enters a state of religious rapture in which she compares Jahmene to a little baby Jesus and decides that his Heavenly Sonic Weapon of Mass Destruction is about the only thing that can stop Chris’s forthcoming rampage. Well, that’s what I took from it anyway. The rest of the judges say nothing, stunned into silence by Nicole’s insanity.

Union J, unfortunately, made it back from the Late Late Toy Show in one piece. Which is a shock, because Poor Man’s Harry Styles looks an awful lot like a troll doll, so I really did think they’d just bundle him up with the rest of the toys and send him to a landfill. That’s what they do after the Toy Show, you know. Ignore all that shite about bits and pieces going to charity, each individual toy is smashed and then set alight by an army of sadistic minions while the font of human misery that is Joe Duffy watches, masturbating furiously. However, I digress. As I said the boys made it back from the Toy Show without being immolated by Joe, which means that we have to endure the Union J intro video. Last week they thought they had done enough to escape the bottom two. But they didn’t! This week they have a massive strop about it and can’t understand why no one likes them. It’s because you’re shit, boys.

Who are they going to sing a song to? THE GIRLS, of course. Well, it’s actually their fans, but we all know that Union J’s fans are THE GIRLS, because that’s what the show has been telling us for the past 9 weeks, and the X-Factor wouldn’t lie. But their song isn’t just for the girls, it’s also relevant to dick-loving nancies like Gaymi because the song they’ve chosen is See Beneath Your Beautiful, a song that was written entirely to piss off people who like proper grammar. It’s a noisy, tuneless mess with overpowering background music and even more Josh than last week. Frankly, I'm sick of Josh. Poor Man’s Harry Styles must’ve really done something horrible to warrant this treatment.

JUDGES! Are too busy doing crossword puzzles to pay the blindest bit of attention to Union J. 

James Arthur would like to make a confession now. He’s had an ulterior motive in being in this competition all along. You see, he isn’t just in it for the music, doing it for the sake of letting the rhythm leave his soul in a cascade of emotion, because that’s just who he is, dammit. No, the other reason he’s on this show is to try and impress a lady. And he’s ready to come right out and dedicate this song directly to the evil witch who cursed him and made him look the way he does. If he can just make her happy once, he’ll turn into a beautiful prince. Or into a less hideous young man. Tonight, he’ll be singing One by U2, which is dedicated to his sisters and brother. They all made something of themselves, while James laboured under the weight of his terrible curse.

Oh look, this week James has decided to perform a tedious guitar driven cover version of a beloved rock song. It’s nice to see him challenge himself. The staging would’ve been a hundred times better if it was performing this song in profile, then halfway through he does a 180 about-turn to reveal the other half of his body is in blackface as Mary J Blige. That would’ve been a major swerve. A wild choir appeared to sing over the horrendous noises emanating from the dark sewer of James Arthur’s face-anus. It doesn't improve things, in much the same way as spraying CK One directly onto an elephant's arse wouldn't make you more likely to put your face in it.

JUDGES! Louis announces that this time next year James will have 5 albums out. So that’ll be the debut album in March, an album of swing covers in May, the difficult second album in July, a compilation of Xmas covers in November, and a Greatest Hits release for Xmas 2013. James Arthur: career sorted. Tulisa thinks the performance was enough to send him through to the final. So hopefully he doesn’t even need to bother with a second song then. Gary describes it as an amazing performance, crying tears of pure jealousy while hammering his desk and shouting out “Why couldn’t I have been your mentor? WHYYYYY?”

And with that we’re on to theme two, Songs to Get You to the Final. Which is even more redundant than the first theme, because when you think about it, isn’t every song they’ve ever sung thus far on the show a song they hope will get them to the final?

Jahmene has chosen to sing At Last, the song from his original audition. I stared at beginning of this paragraph for a few minutes, and I thought to myself “Holy Odin, isn’t Jahmene boring?” I mean, I tried imagining that he was a serial killer, I tried pretending he was being controlled by two alien organisms attached to his eyebrows, and now I have to try pretending he’s the Anti-Chris, the only force on Earth capable of preventing Herr Maloney from walking away with the competition and destroying the human race in the process. But when it comes down to it, Jahmene is just so fucking boring that I find myself forced into writing paragraphs like this, wherein I offer up a slight insight into the frustrating lengths I have to go to in order to make him interesting to me, and conclude by letting you know that it was all for the purpose of getting some words on a page to fool you into thinking that I had actually managed to write something about Jahmene, Lord of Boring.

JUDGES! This time around Nicole managed to avoid speaking in tongues or proclaiming the return of the Messiah. Louis Walsh puts random phrases together from the Louis Walsh soundboard, as he is wont to do.

Chris has decided that the song to get him through to the final is a boring Michael Bublé number. Michael Bublé is a cunt. Just thought I’d mention that. Continuing to mine the vein of rich post-apocalyptic fiction for references to Christopher, how about this one from that most violent, bloody and sexually deviant of tomes, The Bible: On the Lord's day, I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, “Me Nerves”; And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven items from Zara and Topman, adorning his frame as though the mutton were a lamb; His head and his hairs were shorn fine, and his eyes were seemed to peer at me as though from a peculiar staging choice – “People say I’ve lovely eyes” he thundered; his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand a microphone held as though ‘t’were a scythe: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as radioactively orange as the sun; And when I saw him victorious, I fell at his feet and cried, for I had put 20 euros on James Arthur to win.

You will notice I’ve said nothing about Chris’s actual performance, preferring instead to rerun a joke from last week’s recap. You’re very observant like that.

JUDGES! Join with the nations of Earth in weeping at Chris’s continued existence.  

Union J. They decide that they’ll spend their second VT promoting Westlife songs, which is a step up from the first VT where they basically said they hate the public for not voting for them. There’s a fake scene from “5 weeks ago” where Louis says he’ll wear a onesie if they make it to semi final. Cue Louis wearing a onesie during their rehearsal and oh, just fucking kill me now. This is the most contrived thing they’ve done this year, which considering how this show can make Tallafornia look like the work of David Attenborough at the best of times, is saying a bit.

JUDGES! Basically tell the boys they’re going home. Except Nicole, who barks random words like shamazing and onesie at Louis Walsh in no discernibly sensible manner. Louis will do whatever you want him to do to get Union J into the final – he’ll wear a onesie, he’ll have sex with a woman, perhaps he might even SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Finally, it’s James Arthur. In his VT he says that the X-Factor saved his life! He doesn’t explain how, though. Maybe he was choking on a piece of chicken a few weeks ago and Nicole performed the Heimlich manoeuvre. James’s song is The Power of Love performed in the style of a spectral mist that clings to the ghostly form of a banshee. It’s one of those James Arthur performances that the judges will no doubt describe as “intense”, and involves a lot of wailing because you convey emotional pain by screaming as though you’ve just been circumcised by a rusty nail.

JUDGES! Gary says that James is so exciting that people will have stopped ironing or washing their dishes to pay attention to that performance. Wow, that’s such a compliment. That’s like telling our wife she’s so pretty you’d consider making love to her right after you’ve finished having a poo. Nicole calls it transcendent. If Nicole is to be believed then every performance tonight involved shattering the walls of reality or otherwise ending up in a state of ascendant ecstasy somehow. I think she’s moved on to opiates.

RESULTS!

There's a group Song with Rod Stewart which basically involves everyone saying “Merry Christmas” over and over again for four minutes. Thankfully, there are no female contestants left in the show for Rod to impregnate. Then Tulisa sings, which is horrifying. At no point does it rain on her, which means she’s nowhere near as good as Rihanna was last week. It’s also nowhere near as entertaining as Kelly Rowland’s manic striptease when she performed on last year’s semi-finals. Tulisa fail.

Pink comes on and sings that boring song that has the video with somewhat disturbing domestic-violence undertones that I try to ignore because the guy in it has an amazing body. Then she eats Dermot O’Leary up and spits him out for being a tool because she’s Pink and she can do that.

Actual Results Time! To absolutely no one’s surprise, Union J go home, setting the stage for an epic battle of good versus evil next week as Jahmene takes on Christopher for the X-Factor 2012 crown while courst jester James Arthur looks on, trying to forget that no one who’s been in the bottom two has ever won the show.

NEXT WEEK: The ultimate battle of good versus evil, featuring Rihanna, Emeli Sande, One Direction, Kylie Minogue, all the previous contestants, James Arthur, laboured apocalypse jokes and the knockdown, end-of-the-world contest between Shake 'n' Fake and Jahmene, the Anti-Chris. It all takes place over two two-hour specials, which basically means that fuck all happens on the Saturday one and then all hell breaks loose on Sunday. You know you have nothing better to do, you pathetic mess.