And that’s it for the weekend. So, in addition to Jack, we also have to say goodbye to Lola. The competition’s getting tight, isn’t it? Anyone could win. By which I obviously mean that anyone could passively end up not receiving the least amount of votes.
Still, I’ll be back next week (on Saturday too! Fancy that!) for a full weekend of X Factor liveblogging. Please say you’ll join me, because I honestly missed all your comments last night. I will never abandon you again, I promise. By the way, I’m @StuHeritage on Twitter, but you already knew that. See you next week!
Lola’s best bits package is just a load of people saying ‘fishmonger’ as many times as they possibly can. Which, if this liveblog has proved anything at all, is a lot.
It’s all down to the public. The idiot public. They send Lola home. Idiots.
Over to Simon. He thinks Lola sang better, sends Stereo Kicks home, and IT’S A DEADLOCK.
Louis, as expected, sends Lola home. Cheryl sends Stereo Kicks home. Melb sends Lola home. I am right about everything. Remember that, I am always right.
So, over to the judges. Louis will send Lola home. Cheryl will send Stereo Kicks home. Melb’s daughter really likes Stereo Kicks. It’s all down to Simon tonight.
The harmonies are bad, it’s horrible. It’s all horrible.
Lord almighty, this is poor. Because there are eight members in Stereo Kicks, they’ve all decided to be horrible in a different way. One’s off-key, one’s out of time, one’s doing a rap in the style of a man who’s got his lip caught on a fishhook.
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And now for Stereo Kicks. I hope they go through. I’ve got my tribute band iPod Headbutts to think of.
And, to be fair to her, she’s actually making a pretty good fist of this. She’s using every trick in the sing-off book – yelling, extending her notes, bending double like she’s vomiting WKD into a bush next to a bus stop – and it’s probably working for her.
Lola’s singing You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Fishmonger. She isn’t, but she might go tonight, and I’ll miss writing the word ‘fishmonger’.
So Lola’s up first. Cheryl’s already claiming that she received a reduced amount of votes because her mic pack fell out of her outfit last night. I hope that’s true. I hope viewers of X Factor are incredibly hardline about substandard costuming.
Right, I’ve given this some thought. Stereo Kicks fell down last night because they were all dressed identically, which is fatal for a large group of boys desperate to assert their individuality. But then Lola fell down because she decided to start every word in her song last night with the letter B. Again, bin them both, start Homeland 15 minutes early and let me get a decent amount of sleep tonight. Deal? No?
IT'S A LOLA / STEREO KICKS SING-OFF
And I honestly don’t know who’ll go. On one hand, Stereo Kicks look more and more like a failed experiment with every sing-off they find themselves in. On the other, what was that noise that Lola made in the sing-off? It sounded like an entire nursery school being forced to watch I Spit On Your Grave while being splashed with acid. Oh, can’t they both just go home?
And Jay’s though to Skype another day. The final act through to next week is PAUL. Which means...
FLEUR’s through, too. And STEVI, which causes Louis Walsh’s face to literally turn into a question mark. LITERALLY.
And ONLY THE YOUNG. It’s official - ITV viewers love undead Nazis.
And HANK, who also seems angered by his own success.
Also through: ANDREA. Obviously.
So, the first act through to next week is... LAUREN, who once again reacts just a little bit too aggressively for my liking.
We’re back. And now we’re going to destroy some dreams. We’re going to destroy some dreams like a fox.
Ads now. For potatoes and Interstellar, which somehow seems like the perfect microcosm of this year’s X Factor.
‘That’s how it’s done’ says Dermot. And he’s right - performances do tend to be much better if they have a massively increased production budget and also the singer is miming.
She’s definitely singing ‘A donkey’, by the way. Listen to the lyrics: “I swear! A donkey!”. Then she just goes “A donkey! Ho! A donkey!” over and over again. From this, we can assume two things: 1) Cheryl really likes donkeys, and 2) Cheryl might get donkeys and Thundercats mixed up sometimes.
That’s one of my top-ten favourite songs about donkeys, though.
Also 3) the face that Cheryl pulls when she wants us to think that she doesn’t care about things is the same face that everyone else pulls when a stranger pulls a knife on them.
Since it’s Halloween, Cheryl’s dressed as Slutty Mumm-Ra. There’s not as much lunatic choreography as usual, which is probably for the best.
But LOOK, now’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Cheryl’s back, and she’s about to perform her new single A Donkey! This is so exciting!
Dermot’s talking to the judges now, who all agree that all the contestants are good, and also that all the contestants are awful.
We are back! And lines are closed. That’s right, the lines on your app. Dermot needs to update his vocabulary.
ADVERTS NOW! Including one where a woman’s irrational love for chairs slowly alienates everyone she’s ever loved, one for Toffifee (so basically one for the late 1970s) and one about how to fix the tyre on your stupid campervan, you obnoxious would-be Jamie Oliver.
Dermot’s talking to John now. “What’s the most important thing that the X Factor contestants should do, John?” asks Dermot. “Picking a song and then singing it” replies John. Not terribly good at nuance, our John.
No, I recognise this. It’s that one that goes “All of me loves all of you”. Which, again, is improbable. I think what he’s trying to say is ‘The sentient parts of me love many but not all of the conventionally attractive parts of you’. John Legend needs a factchecker, and FAST.
Oh, wait, now he’s singing another song. I have to confess that I don’t know which one it is, because it’s not the one about how we’re all just ordinary people.
Which we’re obviously not, since he’s singing in the same building as a decorative golden candle, a Nazi zombie and a man who doesn’t actually knows.
Oh, John Legend hasn’t actually got a new single out at all. He’s just singing an old single instead. Luckily it’s the only one that anyone actually knows, about how we’re all just ordinary people.
Now for a performance from John Legend. I didn’t actually know that John Legend had a new single out, but then again there hasn’t been a single moment in the last seven years of my life where I would have known that. Ah well.
And that’s everything that happened last night. You are welcome.
And then Stevi Ritchie did Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera and several of my internal organs exploded with either joy or despair. I suppose it doesn’t really matter which at this point.
Stereo Kicks did Everybody (Backstreet’s Back), which is Halloweeny because the thought of The Backstreet Boys being back is genuinely nightmarish. My favourite moment of this performance was when one of them sang ‘Am I sexual?’ at a dancer, and the dancer involuntarily blinked a sad ‘no’ in response.
Only The Young murdered The Monster Mash in such a comprehensively terrible way that I refuse to even mention the fact that one of them was dressed as a bloody Nazi.
Paul Akister Barry From EastEndered Bat Out of Hell, a song he hated. As a punishment, he was briefly enclosed in a crap cylindrical chicken wire prison.
Lauren Platt overcame her fear of choreography to sing Dark Horse relatively well, even though the aforementioned choreography basically just amounted to her slightly drooping to one side twice, like someone suddenly realising that they’ve got to wait three minutes for a bus instead of two.
Andrea Faustini shouted all the vowels of Relight My Fire as loudly as he could, while dressed as what can only be described as an ironic statement on the prevalence of fake tan on Strictly Come Dancing. In other news, I realised that Andrea would look exactly like Arg from TOWIE if he ever shaved his beard off. Andrea must never shave his beard off.
Jay James sold out his oldest friendships with a horrible moment of Skype product placement, then dressed up as a stage hypnotist on a book-signing tour and sang Mad World in an impenetrably disappointing way.
Fleur East did the Thriller dance and went ‘Ooh’ about three times. But then Louis Walsh called it ‘Triller’ and everything was right with the world again.
Lola Saunders did Crazy (Halloweeny because of Cee-Lo Green’s iffy views about rape). Incredibly, she somehow managed to sing the whole thing by only using the letter B. She should have reworded the song and called it Crayfish, though. Because she’s a fishmonger.
First, Hank Big Package Hey Now Kingsley sang Highway to Hell next to the world’s least effective barbed wire fence. Easily his most bearable performance so far, although to be fair I did spend most of it wondering how much talcum powder he needed to cram himself into that ridiculous costume.
OK, recap time. Brace yourself. This will come thick and fast.
This is terrible, though. Nobody’s singing in tune. Literally not a single person. Lola just made a noise like a bungee-jumping cat. And then Ben made a noise like the same cat being caught in a house fire. Basically, I’m choosing to see this performance as the story of the world’s unluckiest cat.
Tonight they’re doing Firework by Katy Perry. Which makes sense, really, because they missed Halloween so they as well miss bonfire night as well.
Should we have a group performance now? No. But will we? Yes. Yes, I suppose we have to.
But for the first time this week (or the second, if you don’t happen to lead the same glamorous jet-set potato-eating lifestyle that I do), let’s meet the judges:
LOUIS! Boltless.
MELB! All fingernails and tongue.
CHERYL! The same old salute as always.
SIMON! An eyebrow raise and a wink, like he was just goosed by a ghost... and liked it.
Here’s Dermot. Tonight’s punch-mime is ever so slightly half-hearted. This does not bode terrifically well for the next hour.
LAST NIGHT! I tried to eat a baked potato off a paper plate, and very quickly realised that it was a huge mistake on my part. ALSO! There was an X Factor, and it was actually quite good.
IT’S TIME! TO CHASE! THE BOO-SIC!
Incidentally, my second-favourite moment of last night’s show was the sight of Simon Cowell in a Harvester. “Someone told me you have scampi and chips” he told a waitress, even though he was holding an open menu in his hands.
Yes, Simon, that person was YOUR BRAIN and it didn’t so much tell you as DECODE A RUDIMENTARY SERIES OF SYMBOLS. I mean, for god’s sake.
AN OPEN LETTER TO X FACTOR'S PRODUCTION STAFF
Dear X Factor’s production staff,
I am moving house soon. Can I have one of Stevi’s gargoyles please? It’d look a treat in my front yard.
@stuheritage pic.twitter.com/SDrpnH19Mz
— Joanna Ryan (@JoannaRyan83) November 2, 2014
This is a genuine request.
Thanks! I love you!
Stu
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Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s X Factor liveblog. But first! An apology:
I was at an ungetoutable family event yesterday, which is why there was no liveblog during last night’s show. From the bottom of my heart, I apologise unreservedly for the howling vortex of grief and shame that you must have experienced upon the realisation that I wouldn’t be lazily recycling the same old rubbish jokes that I always do on Saturday evenings.
What makes it worse is that I missed the death of Jack Walton, who suddenly got the chop at the end of last night’s One Day Too Late Halloween X Factor special. Poor Jack. We barely even knew him. I mean, we knew him enough to know that he basically made a noise like a screwdriver in a waste disposal unit whenever he tried to sing anything, but still. Bye.
Anyway, the better news is that I spent a large portion of today catching up on last night’s show. And, in short, GOOD LORD WHAT THE HELL DID I MISS? Louis dressed as Frankenstein’s Monster. Melb dressed as a sort of decorative Thermos flask. Peter Dickson’s total and thorough inability to approximate a Transylvanian accent. Lola’s boyfriend’s inability to chew gum properly. Fleur’s dad’s horrible collection of scarves. Those gargoyles covering their ears during Stevi’s performance. It was, in a word, incredible.
SO! As a special bonus feature, I’ve made some quick notes about each performance, which I’ll publish during this week’s Interminable Recap. Imagine, an X Factor recap that actually serves a purpose! Will wonders never cease?
All that, PLUS tonight promises performances by John Legend (who’s still apparently a gainfully employed artist) and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (who’ll be dressing up like a soldier and flailing around wildly to mask how catastrophic she is at miming, because she’s a judge again and she’s got a single out and that’s basically how things work around here).
Got all that? Wonderful. The show starts at 8pm, and I welcome all of your comments. Especially ones saying that I let you down last night, because it’s not as if I don’t already feel relentlessly terrible about myself or anything.
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