X MARKS THE SHIT, or rather, Why It's Important to Watch X-Factor.

Ah, my old nemesis, X-Factor, we meet again, FOR THE LAST TIME.

The pantomime shit storm that is X-Factor continues to charge along like a mediocre laden juggernaut on its way to tacky television station, population, several million British plebeians.

Introducing the general public, a gaudy Reebok clad swarm of robots capable of performing two functions that make you believe that they are real life sentient beings! These actions of course are:

(1) Applauding
(2) Booing

And these clever party tricks are employed whenever anyone expresses an opinion that is:

(1) Matching to their opinion
(2) Contrary to their opinion

So, let the futility commense. The general populace of this country, who I lose more and more respect for everyday, get to put an emotional stake in a hollow husk of a contestant, just so that when that talentless figure is used as the vessel to churn out a souless studio album of solo mediocrity they can say, YES, I always liked him, and that was my guy! This is less their one-time solo success, more my own personal victory at guessing what twit the general public are willing to subject themselves to.

Louis Walsh is a judge on X-Factor and, get this, has been quoted as calling X-Factor “a talent show”. Dogs spinning plates on their noses is a talent. X-Factor is a talent show exactly the same way WHSmith is a book shop. It sort of is because it has some books in it, but that’s not reeeally what it is or what it’s there for.

X-Factor is some nightmarish cylinder of pain which people need to plug into to refill their ‘stupid fuel’. This stupid fuel is vital, because stupid fuel helps drive round the empty cogs in peoples heads. It means that they can drive along their desperate desire for an emotional engagement, it lets them driiiive forward towards something that they really, really care about, because unfortunately, the viewers lives are so shallow and pointless that they just don’t have anything better to dedicate themselves to. X-Factor is your packaged, makeshift meaning of existence; for all the family!

Whilst the judges continue to exchange worthless platitudes (which ironically sum up all too accurately the quality of every performers lyrical razor blade to my brain), the contestants get to play their set roles. I wonder if they get the scripts beforehand...”You know, Simon, I’m in it to win and I don’t care what you say and I’m gonna come back here, next week, even bigger, better and stronger” *cue rampant stinking applause*

However, here is my summary of the contestants. But Charlie, how on earth can you form an opinion, you don’t watch it. I’ve seen it, everyone I know watches it, and it tells me a lot about their IQ and their social and media awareness. Despite this, there is genuine reason that you, and I, need to know the following, a reason I will explain at the end. Here we go then:

Daryl: A man of unknown race and with a mouth the size of the sun, this bisexual teacher is a generic tight jeaned solo singer. He gets teary eyed over nothing. Saying that, some people "hate him more than Hitler" apparently. At least the Nazi party didn't sing though. Get Nick Griffin on X-Factor, that ought to even it out a bit! "When you're the BNPeeeee, nobody takes ya seriouslyyyyyy".

Joe McElderry: A personalityless face, he looks about twelve and like he is missing a boy band.

Lloyd Daniels: Somehow Lloyd managed to escape the set of Home and Away and cram himself onto X-Factor, much to everyones disgust. Another person who seems about twelve years old, he is another empty husk of a solo singer (see above) who would struggle to look more typically marketable if he tried. Surfs up "Lloyd", if that is your real name.

Lucie Jones: A voice that sounds like a cat under a bus (flat) I can't even tell if Lucie is pretty or not, because she has one of those faces that looks pretty from some angles and then square and obtuse the next. Plus, do we really need yet another female solo singer coming out of the crap factory that is the 'music industry'? I don't think so. You go girl...go away.

Stacie Solomon: Is she perhaps the stupidest person in the history of mankind? That's impossible to measure, but is she pretty then? Well, let me just say this, a horse is a horse of course of course. I can't bare Stacie Solomon, she has a voice that sounds like hot air quickly escaping out of a kettle, hahahahahaHA uuuuurgh.

John and Edward: Having narrowly missed out on a part in The Shining these scary twins are perhaps the least choreographed and in tune pair of people I have ever, ever seen in my entire life, and I'm including your average man on the street in this, they literally have no talents whatsoever between them, let alone in performing. I bet they don't dress up at halloween, they just tell people to deliver sweets to them or they'll come round and just stand in peoples living room *shudder*

Olly Murs: Next time you look at Olly Murs, think of this - "You have a face like a loaf of bread". Press down on his head and go "ah, Kingsmill" or something. Just because you were probably rejected from Westlife Olly, doesn't mean you can start wearing braces and crooked hats all of a sudden, this isn't Chicago, you're boring, horrifically clean-cut, and I hate you. Do one.

Jamie Archer: What is this bohemian nightmare. The afro says soul, but the voice, persona and overall being says 'pretend hippy'. I bet Jamie loves the environment but likes to leave his lights on and hates to recycle. Anyway, he can't sing, and thrusting your hips around and pretending to 'ROCK OUT' is no substitute for a good voice.

[NONE OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE ANY ORIGINALITY OR PERSONALITY OR CREATIVITY; oh, I'm sorry, how silly, that's not what music is about. Oh, my mistake again, of course, it is. "But Charlie, Sinatra never wrote his own songs", no, he didn't and he sucked. Besides, at least he had style and an original singing voice that still stands out today as clearly being his]. Anyway.

Here’s why you needed to know all that tripe and about all that tripe; because, THE RESULT OF X-FACTOR WILL EFFECT YOU. I know, and I’m sorry, I really am. But you and I (presumably sharp reader) have to take an interest in X-Factor nowadays, because it’s such a foul cultural cancer that whoever wins this travesty of a jumped up, record label, puppet show, we the public will have to see them more often, fact.

Whoever emerges “victorious” (although the whole thing is about as convincing as wrestling) will be turned into sausages via the chart music machine – that means a vomit worthy single, splurging posters, blindly fanatical radio time and a predictably average album deal. We have to know who we’re dealing with, get our heads down, maybe take refuge in a war bunker of some description and emerge only in the distant future when everyone is bored of whatever no-talent boob that X-Factor spawns out. In the meantime, they will be everywhere, so we might as well make sure that it's the least annoying idiot we can.

Who do I want to win?
Well, if you're asking, I'd have to say John and Edward. Their horrifying appearance and abundantly obvious lack of talent aside, I would like them to win the X-Factor, because I'm an ironic bugger, and then at least no one will like them, not just me.

If my soul is ice-cream, X-Factor, and with that ITV (those bastards) are the ice-cream scoop, they carve out my very being from my bodily husk. The horrific level of interest in X-Factor genuinely rattles my weak faith in society. Is this Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Have the friends and family I love and once respected succumbed to alien invaders, aliens who replaced them all with swill consuming creatures bent on watching shit “reality” television “competitions”? I hope that the answer is yes. I’m embarrassed to say that I was present when my Mother and Uncle were discussing, with loud vigour, the events in X-Factor...alongside me...in a service station...bottom of the barrel.

And do you know what, side-not: FUCK the people who 'pretend' to like X-Factor. I hate the people who when talking about X-Factor begin their sentence with: "Oh, well I only watch it because-", STOP; the key word there is 'watch'. You still watch it, stop pretending to do it ironically you dick, you clearly enjoy it because you're there watching it every bloody week, not just when the 'funny rubbish people' are in it at the beginning, stop lying to yourself, you have a problem! The people who do that are much worse than the ones who actually admit to enjoying it.

Of course that’s fantasy, and I condemn absolutely anyone idiot enough to view the X-Factor. You are a brainless human of the highest calibre. I insist that we all start thinking about what we watch on television. Still, as long as you’re happy I suppose. I hope those scary Shining twins win, and that they bring about the apocalypse.