Lopez Blogs

Ah. Imagine a world where the final three of the X Factor are a boy with oversized teeth, a beyond cheesy pop group featuring 2 husbands who are as camp as a sock stuffed bra and their wheelchair user wives, and a dinner lady with bingo wings who used to be a proper dude. Imagine they choose brilliant songs instead of the tired old classics always trotted out on these type shows. And then imagine how it actually makes the X Factor look a bit tired and stale this year (and no i'm not just talking about Biffa Tweedy's hideous hand tattoo). Yes of course i refer to the brilliant Britain's Got Pop Talent piss take just aired on Channel 4. If you didn't see this hilarious Peter Kay vehicle, then you have missed out and i may have a Grateful Dead moment and say "bootleg that puppy". Frankly I would have voted for R Wayne (cos that is what his mom calls him) for his tribute to his dead gran "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" or the poptastic 2 Up 2 Down (cos they are the two husbands "up" and the 2 wheelchair wives "down"! Brilliant!) with their Rick Astley duet of Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart (even if one of the wives did fall off the stool!" A brilliantly accurate micky take of the obsession with reality shows. I'm just slightly disturbed that I would actually buy an R Wayne or 2 Up 2 Down album...

The real X Factor first live show wasn't quite as entertaining on Saturday night. And it was a fricking massive 2 hours long. 2 hours!! And that's not including the ridiculously bloated 45 minute live results show, which featured last year's winner Leon singing his once quite nice but now snoozefest of a new single Don't Call This Love. I'm going to try and do a brief-ish overview of the show each Sunday, so I better get started...

THE GOOD:

• Dannii ~ was just on top form tonight. From her ridiculous dancing to Rachel's performance to her impression of Louis cheering on his act JLS ("he was like someone's mom going 'woooo woooo'"), i am constantly reminded of how brilliant La Minogue de D is. Pity her category is so shit...
• Alexandra looked and sounded stunning singing a ballad intro then dancing up to I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Pity about the tired old song choice, but she really will be the one to watch in this competition.
• Curse Cheryl for having the best category. Diana is probably too quirky to go far but she is so lovely and did an ace stolen-directly-from-Keane version of With or Without You, while Laura surprised me with a power house version of Alicia Key's Falling. Amazing.

THE AVERAGE:

• Oh god where to start? I know it's the first show and nerves got the better of people, but it wasn't an auspicious debut to the live shows. JLS (the boy band - stands for Jack the Lad Swing. Oh for fucks sake...) were saddled with BoysIIMen I'll Make Love To You. Would it have killed Louis to give them something more interesting to warble along to in a bland sort of way?
• Ruth was sort of ok too, but that singing in Spanish as a gimmick is going to get old real quick. Oh wait. It already is old. Just like the song choice of Show Me Heaven.
• Austin with his butterface did an ok rendition of Every Breath You Take. It snoozed along but was vocally ok. Frankly it would've been much more interesting if they did the I'll Be Missing You remake from the 90s...

THE OH SO BAD:

• Ok category by category - the over 25s: Daniel is just a) HUGE! b) boring and c) shame on Dannii for knowing that it was a shit performance so harped on about his dead wife for a bit... But kudos to Dannii for picking a modern song for hateful Rachel to sing. Even if it was the sinfully dull With Every Heartbeat that she sang worse than Girls Aloud (and that's saying something). Simon was right to point out that she was given a cheap useless song to sing :P
• The boys: What on earth Simon saw in Eoghan Quigg (least popstar name since David Sneddon) is beyond me. Dreadful. Words fail me. Actually they don't. He was shit. And not even remotely cute in a grannies go "ahhhwww lets vote for him"
• The groups: Absolutely right that the girl groups both ended up in the bottom two. Girlband did a passable version of Venus but it was all over the place. Then Bad Lashes came on and sang a woefully tuneless Must've Been Love and then tried to be all Spice Girly by giving Simon a bit of banter. It was at that point I decided they must be stopped and apparently the british public agreed. Why Louis thought it was a good idea putting two nigh on identical trashy looking (you can almost smell the vermouth on them) girl groups on when they would just split the vote, is beyond me. I love how Bad Lashes (who were voted off) are now saying the classic "you haven't heard the last of us" line. No, i'm sure i'll read about your asbo in the papers...

THE PLOT TWIST:

Ok, so Scott may now be my favourite person on the X Factor this year, and it's not just because he looked rather ace in his suit and pumps. No, it's because Simon Cowell has pulled off a scheme of machievellian brilliance on prime time tv. So yes, you watch the clip above and frankly it's not very good. Scott seems terrified, way out of his depth and the song choice is all wrong. But there's a glimmer there. The stage set up is very Same Difference esque, and it's possible that Scott will be the fun entertaining person this year. So probably on Friday of this week, Simon realised he'd blown the song choice for poor Scott. Rather than change the song at the last minute, Simon decides that it will be much more amazing if he admits on tv that he - not Scott - got it wrong. Scott will look all puppy eyed and sad, the British public will feel sorry for him, the audience will chant his name in support and even if he is crap next week it will seem brilliant compared to the week before. The plan goes off without a hitch, and hopefully Scott will do something equally fun but more successful next week. I thank you!