You have to feel sorry for The X Factor at this point. Right now, it’s the fool in a barrel frantically trying to paddle away from Niagara Falls. It’s the spider in the bathtub that hasn’t noticed the taps being turned on. It’s the broken-ribbed corpse the crying doctor won’t stop pounding. By all indications, this is the end for The X Factor.
Admittedly, it’s managed to run on fumes for longer than anyone could have guessed. Looking back, the rot set in when Simon Cowell ran off to conquer America and left Gary Barlow the dismal fun-sponge in charge. That was five years ago, but The X Factor is somehow still clinging on. Yet all the signs are currently pointing to The X Factor’s imminent death. Just take a look.
No more Cheryl
Cheryl Fernandez-Versini never managed to contribute much to The X Factor, other than three worryingly tearful breakdowns during each audition stage and the occasional ill-advised whoop in the live shows, but she seemed to have a decent relationship with the show nonetheless. Once a series, almost without fail, she’d pop up onstage in a pair of arseless military harem pants and mime her newest single while dancing around like a toddler who’d been force-fed E-numbers and then strapped to a badly-earthed PowerPlate. This single would go to No 1. Everyone would be happy. But The X Factor has now become so tedious she can’t even be bothered to do that any more. Cheryl leaving the X Factor for the second time is an almost fatal blow. Cheryl being replaced by Tulisa would finish it off for ever.
The return of Louis Walsh
Sorry, that should read “the potential return of Louis Walsh”. Because Louis Walsh has two states. There’s the state where he’s on The X Factor and keeps telling everyone he wants to leave, and the state where he’s off The X Factor and keeps telling everyone he wants to return. One day, when the bombs go off and the cities crumble and the air is thick and black with poison, you’ll still find Louis in among the cockroaches, trying to convince them that he could still feasibly appear on that year’s X Factor. If this is the only trick he’s got, The X Factor is doomed.
The return of Dermot O’Leary
The current state of The X Factor reminds me a little of peak-era Gamesmaster. That show also had a popular host who was replaced for one series by a dimwitted out-of-his-depth clunker. But when Dominik Diamond returned, having wrestled back the reins from Dexter Fletcher, it was never the same. It was too knowing, too cynical, with too much bad feeling so close to the surface. The magic had gone. Even though The X Factor’s returning host is the almost aggressively benign Dermot O’Leary, there’s a chance the whole Olly Murs affair left such a bad taste that even die-hards will be loathe to return.
The rise of The Voice
The X Factor’s contract with ITV may have been extended to 2019. But it will now have to compete for viewers with The Voice UK which has been acquired by ITV. Admittedly this is the world’s worst competition, one that everyone will lose, and it’ll mean we’ll all be forced to tape off ITV like a crime scene for almost every Saturday night of the year. But it’s a competition nevertheless.
Reggie N Bollie didn’t win last year
This is still an outrage. How can anyone take a show seriously if it hands the most popular act of the entire competition a slowed-down reggae version of a Bob Dylan song as a winners’ single? Based on this spectacularly dumb choice alone, The X Factor should never be trusted again. It deserves to be taken outside and shot in the back of the head.
