Monday, January 17, 2011
The Ex Factor
Louis Walsh has been claiming that Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell won't be returning to the X Factor this year as they'll be making more money doing the more lucrative American version whatever unbelievable cover story they've yet to come up with. Of course, this story should be taken with a pinch of salt as even the caterers are more likely to get insider gossip than Louis - he has to rely on Heat's TV guide to tell him when the show goes back on the air - but assuming it is true, who's likely to fill Cheryl's big shoes and Simon's even bigger trousers in the judging hot seats? After all, it's not an easy job to convincingly declare that a half arsed piece of by the numbers is "the performance of the night", and not everyone can pull off that look of worried concern that Cheryl does so well. (Although if you want to give it a shot, just imagine you can smell dog shit, but aren't entirely sure where it's coming from.) Here's a lookout some of the potential contenders:-
- The Churchill Dog - Due to his constant, uncritical nodding and inability to say anything interesting, Churchill would be a perfect X Factor judge, although his belief that everything is worth an "Oh, Yes!" may cause problems during the audition stages, with all manner of crap acts making it through to boot camp thanks to his thumbs up. May therefore prove to be more suitable as a future replacement for Louis Walsh.
- The Re-Animated Corpse of Hitler - Every show needs a hate figure, and while the shrew like face of Dannii Minogue may raise a few hackles, she's unlikely to make the audience react in the venomous way that the pantomime atmosphere of the X Factor studio needs. The Re-Animated Corpse of Hitler, with his harsh German vowels, disdain for any songs that aren't performed in an oompah style, and refusal to even listen to any Jewish acts will soon make him the judge the audience loves to hate. It's unsure at this stage whether he will be considered as a replacement for Simon or Cheryl.
- The Whole of Twitter - Twitter always has an opinion on the X Factor, and every Saturday night the site is guaranteed to be filled with people expressing their views on the night's proceedings. Indeed, there is no greater joy than checking your timeline, only to discover your feed is filled with nothing but badly spelt messages of devotion, expressions of desire towards acts that could land the user a place on the sex offender's register, and complaints about the fact that everyone's timeline is filled up with X Factor related tweets. It seems only right that this wisdom should be captured and given the proper influence on proceedings. Although the whole of twitter may not make the most of this opportunity and may instead claim that Justin Bieber is dead before starting a vaguely misogynistic hash tag.
- The Whole of Facebook - In protest at the sheep like nature of the X Factor audience, they will back whichever anti-establishment act the most popular Facebook group tells them they should, entirely failing to see the irony in this.
- An Actual Judge - Judges are stereotypically considered to be out of touch and are unlikely to have much knowledge of the current music scene. But that's never been a problem for X Factor in the past, so we don't really envisage it being an issue now.
- Aleksandr Orlov - Can use his skill and expertise in comparing meerkats to split the difference between the equally identical and hard to differentiate cookie cutter acts who make the live final every year.
- Lenny Henry - Because he would stand a decent chance of knowing what a young Lenny Henry actually looks like.
- Every Contestant's Big Sister - Cheryl is always quick to claim that she's like a big sister to every act she mentors - and, just like all big sisters she immediately deletes her younger siblings' phone numbers from her mobile the minute they get voted off the contest - so this important role of being seemingly empathetic without actually demonstrating any real emotions or opinions will need to be filled.
- OFCOM - With the communications regulator receiving hundreds of calls each week from idiot viewers who somehow believe that the rules of a game show should be governed by the same legislative process as those surrounding the act of murder, it makes sense that they should be more fully involved so that any breach can be dealt with instantly and, if found to be guilty, Dermot can be hanged live on the Sunday night results show, which will be much more of a ratings hit than Take That appearing. Again.
Labels: Cheryl Cole, Simon Cowell, X Factor
