“I do not watch X-Factor. Not because I’m being snooty, I’m quite happy to be spoon-fed the TV equivalent of Iceland ready meals, but I draw the line at X-Factor. I should love watching people have their dreams of fame snatched away like candy from a baby (or in Cheryl Cole’s case lollies from a toilet attendant) and I can kind of see how people get swept up in the mass hysteria of it all, kind of like how the Germans were with Nazism…but I just can’t. Not even in a “LOL, I watch it to be, like, totally ironic yeah?”

Still, after some gentle coaxing and for journalistic purposes I decided to see if this year’s selection of finalists was as reliably mediocre as they have been before. And what a manky batch of cunts they are.

First to sing was Cher who looks like a scrawny doodle of Cheryl Cole done drunkenly in Crayola. She murdered Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind, complete with ‘rapping’. In fact there were backing dancers throwing up gang signs and body poppin’ and brown people and everything. Cheryl looked so proud of her little uRBaN MooSic protégé, not least because it takes the edge off that time she beat up that black toilet attendant and looked like a massive racist.

Next was fellow tabloid fodder Katie ‘boxcutter chin’ Waissel who similarly murdered Don’t Speak. She’s the “edgy” one cos she distracts from the fact she grunts tunelessly instead of singing with kerazy clothes. In between Cher and Katie, some woman called Mary that works at Tesco wandered on and sang but I think she was just a straggler they had to usher away to a nearby pub.

First to sing was Cher who looks like a scrawny doodle of Cheryl Cole done drunkenly in Crayola.

At this point I thought there would be some sweet relief with the unsmiling and admirably quiet Aiden. Me and Aiden were cool until he went on to ‘perform’ Sinead O’Connor’s hit with a face and voice that said he was curling out a chunky one during a particularly painful bout of hemorrhoids. I was already searching for the control as the next act, some shuffling fat twat called Paije bastardising an Outkast song, came on. By the time it was Rebecca’s turn, apparently the most reasonable of the bunch, the volume was right down. I got the gist though…she’s the classy one, a budget Sade, NEXT.

In fact my concentration was completely lost until a fruity old man whipping his hair back and forth popped up. None other than fabled Brazilian sex pest called Wagner I’ve heard so much about! He just seemed happy to be there- singing gleefully out-of-tune, standing too close to backing dancers and writhing around in an Elvis jumpsuit because he likes the way it cups his balls. Surely it couldn’t get worse?

Following him was Matt Cardle, the bookies favourite to win, the one I should be watching out for. So why was I faced with a man, who most likely smells of ear wax and without a stylist would wear t-shirts from Camden Market emblazoned with fingering jokes, slowly butchering a Roberta Flack classic. And while I’m busy wondering why his balls haven’t dropped yet, off camera Danni and Cheryl are having artificial tears administered. Pan back to Cheryl welling up at his “stunning and moving performance”, looking almost as teary eyed as when she was going to court after she assaulted that toilet attendant.

The final stretch now and next is Treyc…pronounced Tracy, who the judges ponder what her “niche” is. It is obviously not spelling. Or singing. Or being allowed to perform in public whatsoever. Despite this Tracy or Treyc or whatever the fuck, laments how hard it is having a job when all she really wants to be is a popstar. I totally know what you mean babe, I think it’s really unfair that I haven’t been given a recording contract even though I CAN’T FUCKING SING.

Last and least is Cowell’s last hope, boy band One Direction, a group of self satisfyingly fresh faced man-childs, who should be out getting ASBOs and waving craft knifes at pensioners. Instead their footloosing and grinning inanely to Kids in America. I think it was at that point that I remembered that I had to go play Farmville and self-harm for five hours instead.

To be fair Cowell does stress, in-between adjusting his top hat and lighting cigars with flaming wads of cash, that it’s not just a singing competition. What I can gather from the auditions after the fun bit where they ridicule people with mental health issues, the “special something” they look for is pie-eyed with fame sociopaths who feel it’s their God given right that they should be successful pop stars. “I WANT THIS SO BADLY”, well I want a gorilla butler and five grand, doesn’t mean I deserve to fucking get it. But surely musical talent…in such a high profile talent show…should kind of be important, rather than really ‘wanting’ it? Or are we just the toilet attendants in the bogs of life, punched out the way for the lollipop of quick fix fame?”

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