The X Factor begins going through the motions again on Saturday, marking Lost in Showbiz’s duvet-and-Deliveroo descent into autumn competition television that doesn’t end until Tess Daly lets out that final “keep dancing” from behind her 1,000-mile stare, nothing left to give, clasping Claudia’s excitable palm against her own ice-cold clod.
It has been 14 years since Strictly and X Factor first aired, 16 since Ant and Dec first went to the jungle, yet on they trundle, the televisual equivalent of a 2002 Ford Fusion with a smashed window, seats covered in sandwich detritus – slowly falling apart but still technically roadworthy.
This year, though, the wheels may finally be coming off. Let’s start with Strictly Come Dancing. The most watched show in Britain has this time snagged [checks press release] the sidekick from the Capital FM breakfast show only available in some parts of the country, Cat from Red Dwarf, Faye from Steps, Lee from Blue and Susannah from “Trinny and …”. It would have been a star-studded line-up in 2001, but in 2018 you can’t help wondering if, somewhere, there’s a Strictly first-team still recovering from international duty.
Attempts were made to blame the dodgy lineup on the “curse of Strictly”. So many previous contestants have left their romantic partners for their dancing partners, an “insider” told the Daily Star, “the curse is real. No one wants to end up in the same boat.” Although Lost in Showbiz wonders whether any relationship that can be destroyed by 12 weeks of cha-chaing in Spandex was rock solid to begin with.
Normally the show places stories with the media in the runup to launch day, in order to drum up excitement. This year’s pickings have been unusually slim. Woman & Home magazine reached a particularly desperate nadir with a brash headline claiming there is “Going to be a huge change to Strictly Come Dancing this year”. Although, once you click through and scroll down five paragraphs, it emerges the earth-shattering development is that the government ban on plastic microbeads in cosmetic products means the show won’t be able to use the same brand of body glitter it has in previous series. “But never fear,” the magazine reassures readers, such is the G-force of this rollercoaster of scandal, “glitter won’t be entirely out of use in the year’s series, as the show has found a much more eco-friendly alternative”.
So we move to ITV, where apparently if the answer isn’t “Holly Willoughby”, then you’re asking the wrong question. The Celebrity Juice, This Morning, Dancing on Ice, and Play to the Whistle host has just been announced as a substitute on I’m A Celebrity, as Ant is in recovery from addiction.
But does the channel need to mix Dec pratfalls with the “Wow!”s of Holly? It is true that, on his solo stint on Britain’s Got Talent, he appeared a little forlorn, like a divorcee going to the same restaurant but this time for a candlelit dinner for one. But trying to force him into a rebound presenting partnership, when he might still patch things up with his ex, feels even more uncomfortable. Would it be so unthinkable for ITV to go just one year with something else in the winter schedule, rather than trying to force camaraderie from its two most overworked presenters?
Judging by the return of X Factor, it would be. Back, and less liked than ever, at least this year we can enjoy the surprise addition of Ayda Field, whose previous experience in music is [checks press release] absolutely nothing, but has the handy leverage of being married to Robbie Williams, meaning that if Cowell wanted Rob to finally join the panel, he’d have to let Ayda come along too.
Field has indulged Williams’s weirdness since they got married. Accompanying him to UFO conferences. Describing one of the best nights of their marriage as an evening they spent at David Hockney’s house, watching him chainsmoke till dawn. They apparently sometimes call each other Pablo and Tata after the characters on Netflix’s druglord drama Narcos. Perhaps with the two of them together, and Cowell seemingly uninterested in actually trying to fix the show, we might get some genuine moments of surrealism, encouraging the contestants to acknowledge the inherent falseness at the programme’s heart. When the car really is on its last legs, sometimes all you can do is turn the scraps into a sculpture.
Krishnan and Crick – C4’s stars in the making
Two YouTube stars gripped Britain this week, in a series of tête-à-tête showdowns that exposed the gladiatorial nature behind their charismatic persona. No, not KSI and Logan Paul, the charmless vloggers who had a boxing match in Manchester Arena. We’re talking, of course, of Michael Crick and Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the Burton-clad bad boys of Channel 4 News.
Crick went viral by making Theresa May squirm, pointing out that while she was bang up for a trip to Robben Island Adventure tourist attraction during her jaunt round South Africa, she hadn’t ever protested apartheid when it was actually happening. Crick, standing in front of Table Mountain with a tie loose enough to give the impression that he had abseiled down it, jabbed his finger at the prime minister, who could only make that noise she does in response to a difficult question.
But it was the Guru, who is expanding the Channel 4 News cinematic universe with his online spin-off series Ways To Change The World, that really set the internet alight (albeit largely the middle-aged-Mark-Radcliffe-listeners-who-think-Nick-Clegg-isn’t-that-bad section of the internet).
He sat down with Richard Curtis who was in a posh, self-deprecating, “Oh, I can see how you wrote all those Hugh Grant characters” kind of mood. In one section of the chat, since shared endlessly, Curtis berated a negative outlook on the world, saying: “If I make a film like Love Actually, which is a film about people falling in love, when there are a million people falling in love in Britain today, it’s called sentimental”.
The reaction from Twitter stopped just short of “choke me, centrist daddy”. Comedian Miranda Hart wrote she “clapped”, “cheered” and “cried” at the clip. Tom Fletcher from McFly said: “The world needs more people like Richard Curtis.”
The real victory, though, was for Krishnan, who, having spent years playing second fiddle to Jon Snow’s ties, has carved out something of an online niche in being entirely unfazed by whether or not celebrities like him. YouTubers are normally unsettlingly positive and entirely enamoured by fame, whereas KGM couldn’t care less. So far he’s got Robert Downey Jr and Quentin Tarantino to storm out of interviews with him, and had a conversation with Richard Ayoade so tense and awkward that I watch it every time I feel like I have been on my laptop for too long as it forces me to slam it shut.
Alongside Cathy Newman, who has already racked up tens of millions of views for her interview with renaissance-misogynist Jordan Peterson, Crick and the Channel 4 vloggers feel like the YouTube stars Britain deserves.
