Picture the scene.
It’s autumn 2005 and rather than spending a third year at university,
I’ve been shipped off to Germany to fulfil the position of human dictionary at
a grammar school under the auspices of a year abroad.
All my shiny brand-new friends are carrying
on to their finals without me.
But,
thanks to low-cost airlines, I’m able to come back.
After about nine hours of travelling, which
includes a bus transfer to a Swiss airport, a 45-minute flight, further trains
and nonsense, I reach my hallowed college and burst into a friend’s room
expecting a hero’s welcome.
But everyone
ignores me.
On the screen of the
television holding all their attention, a swarthy muscular chap is cavorting in
what looks like an LA swimming pool.
“Guys, it’s me!” I try, convinced they must not have twigged to the
significance of my presence.
“Sssh,”
they all go, “we wanna see
Chico.”
I drop my bags despondently and sink into a
seat, well aware that only an advert break will allow attention to revert back
to me.
This was my first real exposure to watching
The X Factor.
It was the Judges’ Houses section of the
second series, famous for Chico’s yearning to be taken through to the Live
Shows manifesting in an electrocution-risking impromptu swim with microphone in
Sharon Osbourne’s
back garden.
I was derisorily regarding
my pals’ viewing choice, but the pressures of final examinations had led them
to seek solace in the most mindless of TV.
We had been out and about too much to bother with the first series, its
super broad appeal as a shiny-floor Saturday night schedule-filler to replace
Pop Idol,
Popstars
and
Popstars:
The Rivals sparking only contempt as we had the time of our lives spending
our student loans on non-academic pursuits.
But the cultural steamrolling of this reality TV show soon proved
unavoidable.
Leaving the oldies to watch
Strictly Come Dancing, by its fourth series, The X
Factor had struck gold and become essential viewing.
The revolution began with the addition of the
fourth judge,
Dannii
Minogue, only for her to be joined in her second year by the then
Cheryl Cole in a race
to the bottom of constantly younger and tauter-skinned female judges while
Louis Walsh and
Simon Cowell aged in
peace, subject to none of the same scrutiny despite looking much much worse.
Either way, we reached peak X Factor, with two of the X
Factor-iest X Factor moments that stick in my mind being the following:
1.
Cheryl Cole stepping down from the judges’ table
to perform
The Promise
with her bandmates from
Girls
Aloud, all clad in massive sparkling dresses and ITV’s Sunday night
schedule being definitively the epicentre of British culture at that moment in
time.
Sigh.
2.
Katy Perry debuting her
single
Firework on
the Sunday results show, daring to sing live despite missing all of her notes
and leading to some hilarious comments from various friends in their Facebook
statuses decrying lyrics that went “Boom boom boom, even bigger than the moon
moon moon.”
Everything about this
sentence is now vintage and dated.
Now, after decades of manufacturing music acts, The X Factor
has taken on a big refresh of itself, finally acknowledging that there probably
aren’t any decent singers left in the UK and that everyone is watching
Love Island instead.
Nevertheless, let’s celebrate the stages in
any popstar’s life as they make their way from hideous unknown to hideous
C-lister.
Auditions
Descending on various cities, the crew take over large
venues and erect awnings and queuing infrastructure as
Dermot O’Leary shouts
at a moving crane camera that Sheffield/Manchester/Newcastle/Sutton Coldfield
has the X Factor while crowds of wannabes and their dragged-along families make
a cross shape with their pudgy arms.
Series have toyed around with closed-room auditions and demanding
applicants sing in front of baying audiences.
Either way, we’ll get a background story about each hopeful singer.
The fun part is guessing whether they are
going to be outstanding or appalling.
I’ve covered my disdain for sob stories in a previous post on the much
less popular
The Voice UK, but I’ll repeat
the fact that so many people just “want it so bad” as if that’s reason enough
to deserve a successful recording career.
There are two types of delicious moment we are aiming for here.
One is watching someone deluded get a reality
check regarding their superstar aspirations: they can’t actually sing in
tune.
The other is the genuine
excitement when a great new act is discovered.
Nobody mentions the fact that everyone has been pre-vetted by production
before being trotted out in front of the judges, as we’re here for the
entertainment factor, relying on Cowell to interrupt singers mid-flow to demand
different songs in the rudest way possible – leading to one of the best
Bo’ Selecta! apings known to the modern world:
“No offence, but I wish your mother was dead.”
But in fact, the most offensive part is always Louis Walsh likening any
performer of colour to literally any other black celebrity: “You remind me of a
young
Moira Stuart.”
Bootcamp
This is my favourite part but it’s always rushed
through. By this stage, you’ve forgotten
everyone from the Auditions, let alone the ones you really liked. Clusters of hopefuls are cut willy nilly,
sent packing to a big waiting coach for the long trip back to the regions. There’s always a silly sausage who gets trolleyed
the night before and then stinks up the stage as a result. Cruelly, acts are made to sing together in an
unnecessary test of their ability to collaborate with other artists before
they’ve even established themselves. The
culmination is the judge reveal to each of the categories. In separate conference rooms, the Overs, the
Boys, the Girls and the Groups wait anxiously, hoping more than anything that
their chances aren’t killed by being assigned Louis Walsh.
Six Chair Challenge
This was injected in recent years to overhaul the tiredness
of the format in its later decades. A
final bunch in each category is whittled down to six. One by one, they sing before an incensed mob,
receiving a chair/wonky stool if they’ve done well enough. Gripped by their own emotion and
attention-seeking, the judges give away too many chairs too early, resulting in
cruel swapsies where the privilege of sitting is snatched from young
hopefuls. However, the cruellest part is
the fact that they only supply one wobbly stool for the groups, leaving the
majority of the band hovering awkwardly on foot behind a frontman.
Judges’ Houses
If you end up with a chair, then you get to go on holiday
with your judge.
You don’t get to take
the chair with you, though.
This is the
best product placement opportunity for airlines on UK television, as we’re
guaranteed overexcited scenes in airports where the acts in each category find
out their destination.
The unlucky
bastards under Louis Walsh are guaranteed a trip to drizzly Dublin, so you can
always manage a smile at their disappointed faces.
Meanwhile, Cowell and the others hit up
glamorous US and European cities, though the contestants with criminal records
conveniently drop out when they are denied visas.
Everything that takes place from this point
on is pure over-emotional slush, but first each judge reveals their celebrity
help-judge.
Usually it’s some famous pal
who has nothing more interesting to say than “I’m glad I’m not the one
deciding,” which is beyond unhelpful, though at least you can rely on
Sinitta to be making
suggestions about how to use foliage as a clothing option.
Each act performs, normally in an awkward
spot by a swimming pool, probably with the sun in their eyes.
The judges stay up late agonising, before the
most drawn-out sequence known to broadcasting.
Each act is told face-to-face if they’re being taken through to Live
Shows.
A masterclass on how to respond
was given by
Rylan in
2012, but we end up oscillating wildly between happiness and devastation.
It’s at this point that all my favourites are
normally culled, but Dermot is always there to show he doesn’t really care
either way.
Live Shows
And then here we go: the countdown to Christmas.
All the acts sing every Saturday, usually
according to some sort of theme.
Big
Band Week seems sadly to be long gone, but sometimes it’s Guilty Pleasures and
occasionally it’s the back catalogue of whoever they can get to sing on the
Sunday, however spurious.
I like to
imagine the least appropriate acts for this sort of week: the greatest hits of
System of a Down or
Marilyn Manson for
example.
If you thought Judges’ Houses
were drawn out, these shows can sometimes take several years to get
through.
Each judge intros their act,
typically looking down the wrong camera.
Cue jeopardy-emphasising VT where expressions like “Barry’s gotta nail
it this week, or he’s going home” abound, and we forget these people literally
get to return to warm homes and gainful employment, rather than the religious
persecution and unbridled violence we’re all too willing to send Syrian
refugees to.
The acts perform in front
of cameramen who can’t keep still for five seconds, so you see many shots of
everything and nothing, before the judges give unfounded criticism based on how
much they want to be cheered by the studio audience.
Dermot then opens the phone lines and you
vote to save your favourite act.
I’ve
never missed an election (though nobody I’ve ever voted for as ever got into
power) but I wouldn’t be caught dead actually ringing up to vote on this
show.
I prefer the sense of
disappointment when my favourites are ejected.
Voting stats are released once the series are over and the outright
winner has normally already stretched ahead by week one.
Live Shows – The Results
In historical times, people would find out who had got the
fewest votes on the same night, like barbarians.
Now, to stretch things out, the results are
in a separate Sunday show.
This was to
complement perfectly the winning Sunday line-up of The X Factor Results and
Downton Abbey, trapping millions of Brits on
their sofas for two whole hours.
The
show used to open with the never well-rehearsed group number, a highlight for
fans of awkwardness.
Guest acts perform,
and things get meta when a previous season’s winner comes back, free to deliver
their single without the judges being allowed to slag them off this time.
Finally, Dermot reveals the bottom two and
then the judges decide who to save.
There are tears and tantrums, but nothing beats Deadlock.
This is when the judges are split and we have
to go back to the vote result.
The
nation comes to a standstill and everyone has carte blanche to rape and pillage
freely until a disappointed minstrel is being shown their best bits.
Through attrition, we are finally left with
the, er, finalists.
The Final
Hello Wembley!
These
days, the Final has outgrown a TV studio and a whole arena needs hiring out to
get through the inordinate pageantry of selecting who’s got the X Factor.
Established acts clamour to promote latest
releases in and among the finalists’ own best songs, with a quick comedic break
offered by the exploitative but necessary wheeling out of all the worst singers
from that year’s series.
No expense is
spared, as long as that expense is spent on confetti cannons.
Tradition dictates the finalists duet with
the planet’s most successful popstars.
One peak year saw
Beyoncé
grace our stage, but these days it tends to be the awful
Robbie Williams, who
is guaranteed to forget his own lyrics.
Our winner is crowned and rather than crossing live to
Andi Peters at the CD
factory, the winner’s single is available for immediate download.
Our champion tries to perform it before being
rushed by the other finalists and Dermot eventually gives up trying to keep
control of the activities on stage.
Even
winning the show doesn’t guarantee success – more than half of the victors have
faded into obscurity.
But, sure as eggs
is eggs, another generation of schoolchildren will expect overnight success in
pop music, should their careers as YouTubers or pro footballers not work out.]
I jest!
I’ve slagged
this show off throughout, but I really do bloody love it.
Working in media buying, I dreamed ITV would
one day invite me.
But then my team did
a licensing deal for a client directly with the production company.
Next thing I knew, I found myself at Fountain
Studios for a results show.
I was meant
to be looking after clients, but I was so excited that they were forced to take
on a parental role to my hyperactive teenage behaviour.
Taylor Swift performed
Shake It Off and I
forgot to breathe throughout the whole performance.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to be
invited back, both to the Live Shows and The Final itself.
The best part of the Live Shows is mingling
backstage with the friends and family of the contestants, lording it over them
with my free-drink wristband while they’re forced to pay.
The acts then emerge from their performances
and I’m always surprised by how tiny some of them are.
Throughout filming, Cowell spends every
commercial break outside smoking (assuming the fag packets are stored in his
vile bootcut jeans, while the lighter nestles among his toilet brush barnet),
while the female judges have their hair and make-up constantly touched up.
The Final is a massive undertaking, with a
VIP ball in a nearby hotel before and after.
This blog has made it clear on repeated occasions that a lot
of my viewing tastes align with those of teenage girls, so my fandom of The X
Factor should come as no surprise. This
year, it’s taking a break while other formats are trialled, and while it may
never ascend to its giddy heights, it still remains one of the biggest shows on
commercial television, despite its overly commercial, sensationalised and
desperate-for-drama tendencies. Let’s be
honest, nobody delays their Saturday evening out any more to catch The X
Factor, plus you can always catch up the next day with the benefit of fast
forward. But I’ll never stop being
charmed by the great unwashed’s unbridled desire for five minutes of fame. So, in tribute, let’s make me famous by
telling a friend how good this blog is.
