Fair? This is television

While I may not be a big fan of the X Factor, I can occasionally sit down and watch the odd episode without wanting to curl up in a cringing little ball beneath the sofa. Admittedly that isn't during the opening episodes, where the untalented and unsuspecting members of the general public are shoved through like cattle and poked and prodded then rejected by the showbiz elite. Seriously, I just can't watch it. Firstly I don't understand how some of these people are under the delusion that they're good, or who it was that told them that going in for the competition was a good idea. Others are just so ugly that there's no way they could seriously win, and then there are the ones that just aren't quite good enough, and those are the ones that are hardest to watch. The judges sit there and umm and arr about the starry eyed hopeful for 10 minutes, then put it down to a vote after listening to whatever dreadful sob story they've got, just to make it all the more painful to watch. "Oh no!" we think, "evil Simon Cowell has crushed the dreams of another poor kid". Sad fact is that Simon is almost always right. Admittedly I don't think he picks the nicest ways of telling people so. Dropping the bombshell that they're the worst person he's seen all day seems to border on the sadistically cruel, but I suppose if you're going to have your dreams crushed it may as well be completely, and with the finality of the Monty Python boot.

Anyway, I didn't start this to chastise Simon Cowell, I actually decided to write this just to comment briefly on the Laura White vs Ruth Lorenzo controversy. I hadn't really been keeping up with the show, so I went on to YouTube and looked up their performances, and have just a few things to say.

Firstly, the voting on The X Factor doesn't always give a clear picture of how good the performers are. Instead of voting for their favourite performance (which I imagine is what you're supposed to do) voters will frequently call in to place their vote for the person they least want to go out. And this isn't always their favourite. Most voters assume that their favourite will receive enough votes from their fans to keep them in the competition. This seems like a logical explanation for why someone who seemed to have so many fans ended up in the bottom two. Because other people were too keen on trying to keep Daniel Evans (or "Deadwife" as my better half calls him) in the competition. We also witnessed it this week when the public voted to save Diana Vickers, who let's face it, performed like crap. Yes, she was ill, but it was still crap, and though you can give her props for trying, if the show were about effort and sportsmanship, it would not produce performers who were actually, you know, good.

I was more or less horrified to find out The X Factor had done Mariah Carey week. Not because I don't like Mariah, but as a long-term admirer of her work and a rather amateur singer, I know that her songs are really hard to sing. Unless you're Mariah Carey, or somebody of her calibre. Alexandra was distinctly flat on the high notes of "Without You", though JLS faired very well in their performance of "One Sweet Day", which was altogether much better than their bizarre Beatles medley that they did this week. Ruth's performance was week, and she fumbled for the correct notes at times. Laura's performance of "Endless Love" seemed strong, if she did over-bake it a bit on the high notes in the second half. It must have been a surprise therefore that she ended up in the bottom two, but whereas the papers I read heaped the fault on Louis Walsh for his criticism and said that he had removed her from the competition as she was too big a threat, I have to disagree. Whereas Laura's final performance of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" showed a lack of spirit, and some quesionable tuning in places, Ruth really let rip with "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and revealed some pretty awesome rocky vocals. Even as they stood there before the panel, you could see in Laura's face that she knew she was going out. The fight in her was just gone. On top of that, though Louis placed the final vote, Simon and Danni had already voted to keep Ruth instead of Laura, with only Cheryl placing her vote for Laura as she was her contender. Simon, bearing the other unbiased vote, must have seen, as Louis rather accurately pointed out, that Ruth had more fight in her, and had performed better when it was needed.

Having said all of this, I still think that this year's performers are all lack lustre compared to my favourite X Factor winners. Let's face it, the show has coughed up some terriby boring people over it's seasons. Leon Jackson's a good example, with only Will Young and Leona Lewis really making any headway into the charts. I liked those two; they were note perfect every week and could sing everything you threw at them. Leona's performance on this week's X Factor was really good, and frankly there just isn't anyone of that kind of calibre amongst this year's finalists.

I find it a worrying fact that following Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis, Britney is going to be on the next X Factor. Fair enough, she's a star, but are we really saying that she has vocals comparable to Mariah and Leona? And will the contestants have to sing Britney songs? Somehow I'm not quite convinced that Eoghan belting his way through "Oops I did it again" is quite what I had in mind for a Saturday night.

At least it will be entertaining.