X-FACTOR 2011: Because apparently I hate my brain
Kelly Rowland exclaims excitedly that "There are some pretty amazing acts coming out of Britain right now," which, strictly speaking, is true if by ‘acts’ you mean ‘flesh eating beetles’ and by ‘Britain’ you meant ‘Simon Cowell’s money-scented dick hole.’
X-Factor is back and is, at the time of this review, already 8 episodes into its interminable run. So by my calculations, everyone who has been watching it from the start is already 8 weeks into my future and probably enjoying hover-boards, flying cars and inner-ears that smell of poorly tuned cock.
This year, Cowell is conspicuously absent, vacating X Factor UK in favor of piloting X Factor USA and a new project called Red or Black (a game show concept based on science’s attempts to teach chimps to point at things & Simon’s middle finger to your frontal lobes.)
On the panel this time are:
Louis Walsh: The loneliest man in pop and Ireland’s own musical J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Gary Barlow: The smooth-touch, rounded applicator tip that the cruel show’s vagina demands.
Kelly Rowland: The part of Destiny’s Child not called Beyonce.
Tulisa Contostavlos: A musical version of the Jeremy Kyle Show.
Frankie from Brighton was the first hopeful to step on stage.
Regular viewers of the show will know the script. X Factor always starts with something relatively good and marketable as a contrast to the 60 minutes of medical diarrhea that’s going to be pumped on after it. It’s like being given a spoon of strawberry jam before realising that the spoon is actually a dick and that the dick lasts until Christmas.
Frankie is one of those young, attractive, confident, haircutted twats who looks like he’s something that dropped off of the show Skins in the shower. The producer’s eyes must have lit up with dollar signs when he arrived looking good and actually being able to sing without causing prolapses. Frankie revealed his cheeky, girl-loving side live on stage by revealing the seven girls' names tattood on his butt.
A young girl called Kitty was up next with a song that apparently touched Tulisa Contostavlos deeply. You can follow this story on The Xtra Factor, where the song in question is treated for yeast infections and genital warts.
Sondesh Kumar appeared as the standard ‘laugh at the crazy person’ act. Sondesh revealed that he considered Prince, Lady Gaga or Jay-Z to be the greatest influences on his talent, which is confusing since I don’t remember ever seeing a Prince or Gaga music video that was based on seizures and crippling sub-normalcy.
47 year old Ellan performed an interpretive version of Flashdance by Irene Cara that was 50% terrible and 50% free-roaming ham.
Wendy Davis (Penfold from Dangermouse in a dress) presented a Wuthering-Heights-themed PSA on ‘buying stronger locks for laboratory doors.'
Goldie Cheung stole the entire episode for me. Goldie was a 50 year old Tai-Chi instructor, whose first moments on television are of her vomiting violently into a Tesco carrier bag. Between bouts of screaming-emesis, Goldie assured viewers that she was going to be just like Tina Turner, which I can only assume referred to the 16 dark years of Ike and Tina.
With her alimentary canal finally emptier than Louis Walsh’s Facebook friends list, she emerged on stage to meet the judges. Wearing the kind of dress you need 2 haircuts to wear, Goldie performed a song called Copper Bell (Which is a traditional eastern folk song that means ‘I’ve lost my fucking mind’.
What followed was a shrieking collection of ‘Dings’, 'Pings’ and ‘Dongs’ that unintentionally set the 'Let's not stereotype cultures' movements back thousands of years. The lyrics to the song most likely originated from a Michael Bay script for a planned Jackie Chan movie and recordings of Copper Bell probably have the power to raise Bernard Matthews' decomposing corpse from the grave and send it looking for the producers of the show to give them a high 5.
Apparently, unkillable, necromantic, dragon ladies making sounds like Ninja-Crime in a Bell Factory cannot be restricted to a a 400 foot stage and she was soon slinking down the steps and onto the judges for maximum terror.
She ended her half-century war on genitals by doing the splits. The message of zero tolerance to sexual organs couldn’t have been clearer had she just ended the song by ramming her pelvis into dynamite.
Throughout all of this madness, Goldie’s mother stood enthusiastically in the wings supporting her daughter’s performance with a level of determination that suggested that she probably couldn’t smell the 30 litres of partially digested shrimp balls her daughter had just left on the floor.
Athough I may appear to be being unnecessarily cruel, I am simply reflecting the tone of the show. It thrives on horror, pigeonholing, judgmental attitudes and suffering. It's like a reverse Peter Pan who can only fly if you think of the time you walked in on your uncle sexing the dog.
The judges and contestants may be new but the show is still the same exploitative, stereotyping, racist, contrived bull-shit... And I have 7 episodes to catch up on.