If Simon Cowell is X Factor’s Ebenezer Scrooge – rich, joyless, fruitlessly staving off the inevitability of death by forcing contestants to sing him 40-year-old disco songs – then Louis Walsh is its Jacob Marley. No matter how hard he struggles to escape, he’s doomed to forever pace the purgatorial X Factor studio corridors, clanking his chains and emitting a familiar haunted cry: “You remind me of a little Lennnnnnny Hennnnnnnryyyyyy”.
Sure, he has come close to leaving the show before – when Sharon Osbourne threw a glass of water over him in 2006, when he was sacked and then promptly reinstated in 2007, when everyone wanted him gone in 2011, when he threatened to leave in 2013 – but it was never taken seriously. Louis Walsh was a vital part of X Factor, the theory went. He was the show’s heart or, perhaps more appropriately, the part of its brain that didn’t work properly because a shard of metal had got lodged there following an unfortunate industrial accident.
But now, alas, the final curtain appears to be falling. As part of the risky youth-orientated update that’s seen the too-tight trousers of Dermot O’Leary get replaced with the too-tight trousers of Olly Murs, it looks very much as if Walsh has been shown the door once and for all. In the early hours of this morning, Simon Cowell seemed to confirm this with a tweet:
Louis Walsh is one of the good guys. We will always be friends. The door remains open and who knows what's next.......
— Simon Cowell (@SimonCowell) May 11, 2015
All in all, this is probably for the best. Never the most incisive of talent show judges, in recent years he managed to boil down his already meagre critiquing style into a constant repetition of “[NAME], you’re just [AGE] and everybody loves you. You remind me of a little [FIGURE WHO BEARS NO RESEMBLANCE, PHYSICAL OR OTHERWISE, TO THE CONTESTANT].”
Walsh was increasingly becoming an afterthought on the show. He was a punchline, a silly uncle, only there to shepherd the worst performers through the first six weeks of the live finals. He’ll be missed – especially if Cowell replaces him with a fun-free Gary Barlow figure, as is his tendency – but not for long.
However, the bizarrely long ellipsis at the end of Cowell’s tweet might just offer Walsh a form of reprieve. It suggests that he might not be through with X Factor after all. Perhaps he’ll turn up during the judges’ house stage, helping Cheryl Fernandez-Versisi to whittle down her finalists. Perhaps he’ll be given a visible behind-the-scenes role, like Brian Friedman or that bloke from 10 years ago who looked like Billy Connolly after a Colour Run. Perhaps he’ll even pop up in his own brief X Factor segment each week, wearing a funny hat while repeatedly walking into a patio door.
But, if I were Walsh, I’d take this opportunity to run from X Factor and never look back. This is his big chance to escape, to start being something other than a performing monkey. He finally gets to do something else now, to show the world that he’s capable of basic intelligence. His chains have been severed. Finally, Louis Walsh can ascend.
