Right and wrong.

Folded:

• Flashback by Calvin Harris (the definition of a ditty. Annoy yourself for liking it)
• Halloween: Vampires (only really frightening if you fear teenagers)
• Burger King ‘Tub Burger’ (or ‘Windows 7’ according to the PR. Looks delicious)
• Zombieland (shouldn’t be compared to Shaun of the Dead, but it will be. Plus, whisper it, it might be funnier too)
• Give in to Twitter (join late; you’ll be glad you did. What with this and Facebook, and even MySpace if you’re really bored, you need never work again)

Creased:

• Pork Pie hat (don’t be tempted. Trust us, you can’t wear one. Only Popeye Doyle can)
• TJ Hooker (Shatner as a police PT instructor? Even his stuntman doesn’t look credible)
• Fight For This Love by Cheryl Cole (Cole as Natasha Bedingfield, only blander. That’s right, blander)
• Halloween: Clowns (what do you mean they’re not scary? Pennywise? Tim Curry? TIM CURRY!)
• Quest (Dave for explorers)

Last night Ricky Loney was eliminated from X Factor. Hopefully you didn’t form a close attachment to him. Oh, of course you didn’t – he was arse-awful.

But aside from that gigantic inevitability, what else happened on X Factor this weekend? Well, Whitney Houston was the guest mentor, so the theme was obviously Diva Night. We heard it was going to be Ludicrous Former Crack-Addict Hasbeens Who Need Weird-Haired Frank Butcher Lookalike Sidekicks To Keep Them Upright, but that was found to be slightly too niche.

Anyway, how did the X Factor contestants do this weekend? Time for that recap you’ve all been waiting for…

Lucie Jones – Everybody has their own definition of the word ‘diva’. Take Lucie Jones, for example. Based on Saturday’s X Factor performance of How Will I Know, she thinks a diva is someone who drops to the floor inside a perspex testicle and then clomps around like an obnoxiously self-confident four-year-old at a Butlins junior talent show. Still, we don’t think that anybody should actually vote for Lucie. You see, if she continues to fill her routines with as many violently sassy hair-flicks as she did on Saturday’s X Factor, it’ll only be a matter of time before her head pops off and she gets rushed to hospital. It’d be a wasted vote.

Olly Murs – The worst thing about Olly Murs, after his hair and his needlessly large mouth and his stupid face and everything he’s ever done in his entire life, is that he’s almost a good performer. On Saturday’s X Factor Olly sang Fool In Love, and 90% of it was decent. It was in tune, nicely choreographed and – crucially – quite short. But the last 10% just made us want to reach inside our TV and slap his massive clueless face. For instance, does Olly really need to shout “HAH!” and “NOW LISTEN!” between every line he sings? No. Does he really have to be so smug that he’s constantly seems on the verge of dissolving? No? Does he really have to look like a dangerously uninhibited Bradley from EastEnders? Well, yes, probably. And that’s why we’ll never be able to love him.

Miss Frank – You may have noticed that we wanted Miss Frank to win X Factor this year. Well that probably won’t happen any more, and it’s all Miss Frank’s fault. If they’d chosen to sing an old Tina Turner song like Olly did, then they’d have sailed through to the next round. But they didn’t. They sang All The Man That I Need. By Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston, for God’s sake. And they sang most of it solo. And there wasn’t even any rapping. It was just a great big empty nothing. By Whitney Houston. Ugh. It’s a shame – if we know who Miss Frank are more than Miss Frank do, then that can’t be a good sign. Disappointing.

Rachel Adedeji - When we saw Rachel Adedeji start her X Factor performance of If I Were A Boy by lying on her back, we were initially worried that her giant asymmetrical haircut had thrown her back out or something. But no, it was all just a false alarm – in fact, there’s a good chance that Rachel was only doing it to make the song more memorable. It was a nice try, because God knows the song itself was such a fat sack of nothing that we barely even noticed when it finished. If only those four haggard stripper girls were around to save Rachel’s arse every week, then she’d be just fine.

Joe McElderry – Here’s what we learnt about Joe McElderry on Saturday’s X Factor: 1) His childhood was an elongated nightmare that alternated between obesity and transvestitism. 2) If he over-emoted any more during his version of Where Do Broken Hearts Go then he would have actually had to do a shit in his trousers. 3) If Britain ever remade High School Musical, then Joe would definitely be a shoo-in for the role of fourth male lead. 4) We’re not really sure that a show like X Factor should be won by someone who clearly idolises H From Steps to such a worrying extent.

Danyl Johnson – So on Saturday’s X Factor, Danyl Johnson performed I Didn’t Know My Own Strength; a song from Whitney Houston’s new album that nobody has ever heard. How did Danyl manage to cope with such a risky strategy? The same way that he copes with everything – by atonally howling the lyrics at the top of his voice. It was awful, but all the X Factor judges were duty-bound to praise it, because a) the song’s executive producer Clive Davis was sitting right next to them and b) nobody wanted to accidentally call Danyl a raging homo again. For the record, though, it was terrible.

Lloyd Daniels – Lloyd didn’t so much perform Bleeding Love on Saturday’s X Factor as cluelessly mumble the lyrics to Bleeding Love while someone held down the Dido preset button on a 1980s Bontempi keyboard. And it was genuinely horrible, possibly the most embarrassing X Factor performance since the days of The Unconventionals. Nobody liked it. The audience didn’t like it. The X Factor judges didn’t like it. Not even Whitney Houston liked it, and she’s spent most of the last decade off her face on crack. Not that Lloyd was ever in danger of being eliminated, though, because Cheryl Cole cried at the end of it and Lloyd gave her a hug. And that’s the sort of shit that you idiots apparently fall for. We hate you sometimes, idiots.

John & Edward – OK John & Edward, we may have got you wrong. We thought you were just a couple of annoying Irish morons, but we were mistaken. In actual fact you are MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME. On Saturday’s X Factor John & Edward performed Oops… I Did It Again. All of Oops… I Did It Again. Even the spoken-word interlude. While wearing red leather suits. On a technical level there might have been some timing and pitch issues, but on a spiritual level John & Edward were THE BEST THING WE HAVE EVER SEEN. Watching John & Edward was like watching a UNICORN HUMP A RAINBOW. John & Edward were JESUSLIKE. John & Edward MUST WIN X FACTOR. THEY MUST. WIN. X FACTOR.

Rikki Loney - Whoever decided to make Rikki Loney – weedy little pointless hat-wearing Rikki Loney – sing Respect on Saturday’s X Factor deserves a medal. Because it’s finally what got Rikki slung out of X Factor forever. It was a dreary, muted version of Respect that was as flat and uneventful as we imagine most of Rikki’s life has been up until this point, and not even paying four tubby backing singing to desperately dry-hump their microphone stands could detract from how monstrous it all was. The end.

Jamie Archer – Up to and during his performance of Thank You on Saturday’s X Factor, we were worried that Jamie Archer was going to let us down. True, he did refer to himself as ‘Mr Cool Guy’ in the pre-song VT. And he did say that the song would show the public who he really was – which, based on his performance, means that he’s really a bland, whiny turd. But he didn’t even shout “Come on!” at the audience once during the song. Were we wrong about Jamie Archer? Was he less of a staggering cock than we’d been giving him credit for? No. Because as soon as he finished singing, Jamie Archer high-fived Simon Cowell. Cockitude restored. As you were, people.

Stacey Solomon – Now, OK, based on talent Stacey Solomon should probably win X Factor. But we’re worried about her. We think we’re detecting the genesis of Leona Syndrome with her. You know Leona Syndrome. It’s where a singer is so consistently faultless week after week that the public starts to tire of them, putting their chances of winning in jeopardy. Stacey’s X Factor performance of At Last on Saturday was perfect, just as her X Factor performance of The Scientist the week before was perfect. This is the sort of thing that could get old fast. So thank God she’s such a gibbering chav, eh? That’ll save her.

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Some of you might have noticed that over the course of the Rocky films, the gravel-voiced trainer with the face like a seriously chewed piece of gum never got into the ring. He’d happily bark at Sly Stallone, calling him a loser, telling him what to do, but that was it. And the reason was simple – if he’d stepped up to Apollo Creed himself, the old man would have be dead before he hit the floor. It’s a story that now echoes the life of Cheryl Cole.

Everyone seems to have been going bananas over the last few days, as Cole has wriggled and wormed her way out of performing her new solo song live on Saturday night’s X Factor, even though she mentors a gaggle of live singers week in week out. And we all know why. She knows why. Literally everyone knows why. Yet, no one seems comfortable acknowledging that it’s the right move.

Put simply, if she went live, she’d be totally rubbish. She’s not a very good singer, she’s about third in line for lead vocals in Girls Aloud – and that’s only because no one appears to like the transparent ginger one taking up too much of the spotlight, and the other one (Kimberley?) sings like she’s doing an impression of a trumpet. Hence, it would be the live X Factor equivalent of watching Rolf Harris showing Van Gogh how to paint. Then how would her little singing monkeys ever respect her again?

At least this way, she gets to dangle a few “what ifs” in the air, which will surely all be forgotten the minute Dannii Minogue opens her mouth to out another could-be-homosexual. Or Louis stumbles mouth first into an accidental racism.

Apparently Cole told an “unnamed friend” of hers:

“I really don’t see the problem. I will be singing live. I just won’t have time to get changed and get prepared for the performance, and be a judge on the show. It would be too hectic.”

We would suggest taking a small plastic bag of clothes to the judging seat with her, which she could quickly slip into during the adverts, but we know how to read between the lines. If she was genuinely worried about everything being too hectic, she should possibly spare a thought for the contestants during sing-off time. Within seconds of being told that the public doesn’t much like them, they’re shoved back into the spotlight to be jeered all over again. If you look very closely, you can actually make out their souls dying.

In other X Factor news, Leona got chinned by a mentalist.

Want more from Josh? Tune in to Interestment on your internet.

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9 – Suri Cruise: adorable or just a liiiitle bit creepy? – Bestweekever

8 - A list about Arrested Development, which automatically makes it a very good list indeed - Interestment

7 - Some bloke we’ve never heard of says he’s better in bed than some woman we’ve never heard of says he is – AmyGrindhouse

6 - An entire podcast about Bruce Forsyth. You heard – WatchWithMothers

5 – A promise: this talking piano will be the most terrifying thing you’ll see all day – Geekologie

4 - A Chromeo widget that’ll keep you entertained for anything up to a minute – MyChemicalToilet

3 – Do you want to listen to songs from Cheryl Cole’s new album, even though they’re not particularly good? Well tough. Listen to them. LISTEN TO THEM – Popsugar

2 - It’s National Chocolate Week. So, you know, go and win some chocolate – DomesticSluttery

1 - Question: can a dustbin confuse idiots? Answer: well, yes, obviously…

Good news – the X Factor live finals are back! Better news – Kandy Rain were kicked off. Jesus on a stick, they were crap.

But anyway, how did the X Factor contestants do? Let’s have a wonderful recap, shall we?

Rachel Adedeji - Rachel’s obviously a bright girl, because she left university to appear on X Factor. It’s a smart move because, while graduating from university is likely to increase your earning potential, most people who go on X Factor end up bitterly playing to tiny groups of disinterested pensioners in Welsh caravan parks for the rest of their miserable lives. Anyway, on Saturday’s X Factor, Rachel did a sort of muffled version of Let Me Entertain You accompanied by about 50 nightmarish mime artists who looked as if they’d like nothing better than to abduct your children and eat them. Horrible.

Kandy Rain – As well as being the first act out, Kandy Rain were the first act to kickstart a controversy on X Factor when, after their admittedly awful performance of Addicted To Love, Cheryl Cole essentially told them that they dressed like sluts. This caused Simon Cowell to remind Cheryl that she only got famous because she dressed like a slut too, which isn’t strictly true. In actual fact, Cheryl Cole got famous by dressing like a slut and by screeching violent racial epithets at nightclub toilet attendants. Get your facts straight, Simon. Yeesh.

Olly Murs – So Olly Murs desperately wants to be Robbie Williams, and Robbie Williams was the guest mentor on Saturday’s X Factor. So what did Olly sing? That’s right – a Robbie Williams song. In the style of Robbie Williams. On the plus side, Robbie Williams did say that he wanted to be friends with Olly, but that’s only because Olly is exactly like Robbie Williams and Robbie Williams looks like the sort of person who masturbates to pictures of himself. Fact.

Rikki Loney – On Saturday’s X Factor, Rikki performed Back To Black by Amy Winehouse and wasn’t particularly good. However, that’s not what we want to talk about. We want to talk about all of Rikki Loney’s poxy hats. We’re starting to believe that Rikki uses hats as a kind of personality substitute. And if that’s the case, it works. Because we do think that Rikki has a personality – it’s the personality of a dickhead who wears too many stupid hats.

Stacey Solomon – On Saturday’s X Factor, Stacey Solomon performed The Scientist by Coldplay, and was promptly complimented by all the judges for her brave choice of song. It just goes to show how dull X Factor is when a ballad by the world’s dreariest bunch of namby-pamby pissbags gets held up as a leftfield experimental voyage into the terrifying unknown. Maybe next week Stacey Solomon will sing a Keane song and Louis Walsh will have an aneurysm. Who knows?

Miss Frank - We’ve never really hidden our desire to see Miss Frank win X Factor. And we’re still standing by that following Saturday’s show – their rendition of Who’s Loving You was timeless and soulful and actually pretty amazing. We hesitate to call perfect, because the one in the middle didn’t arbitrarily break off and start rapping in a foreign language halfway through, but it was close enough for now.

Jamie Archer – Jamie Archer is a big-haired titsack who we dislike for any number of reasons, like the way that his version of Get It On was a pile of dreadful, overblown guff and the way that we can’t help feeling as if he’s probably Jamie Oliver’s favourite contestant. However, Jamie shouldn’t leave X Factor just yet, because he’s the star of our new favourite X Factor game – the How Many Times Will Jamie Archer Interrupt His Own Song To Bellow ‘Come On’ At The Studio Audience game. On Saturday’s X Factor it was twice. Can he beat this next week? We hope so. We believe in you, Jamie. WE BELIEVE IN YOU.

Lloyd Daniels – A theory: if hair straighteners were banned tomorrow, Lloyd would never stand a chance of winning X Factor. Because that’s all he is – a silly haircut plopped on top of the world’s dullest boy. On Saturday, his X Factor performance of Cry Me A River was lifeless and lacklustre and anaemic and only livened up by the mental dancer next to him who kept flinging herself around like she was on fire. The judges don’t like him. The musical directors don’t like him. Robbie Williams didn’t seem to like him. But despite all this we get the feeling that Lloyd’s going to go far. It’s a very silly haircut, after all.

Lucie Jones – Lucie is pretty, has a pretty voice and can sing ballads quite well. On Saturday’s X Factor pretty Lucie used her pretty voice to sing a ballad. We’re probably going be cutting and pasting that last sentence into every X Factor recap we write about Lucie from now on, because we get the feeling that she’ll be doing that a lot.

John & Edward - This year’s designated hate targets, John & Edward used Saturday’s X Factor to perform Rock DJ. And you know what? It wasn’t terrible. Now, was that because our expectations of them are so low that we’d be pleasantly surprised if they managed to go for two minutes without kicking a puppy in the ribcage or curling out a turd on the stage? Well, yes. Duh.

Joe McElderry – Joe McElderry is such a gaping charisma vacuum that he may as well not even exist. Case in point: on Saturday’s X Factor, Joe performed No Regrets as if he was auditioning for Robbie Williams: The Musical. It was dire, but on the plus side at least now we know what it’s like to see a desperately bitter song performed by a grinning toddler. So that’s something.

Danyl Johnson - Outed by Dannii Minogue following his performance of And I Am Telling You, to his obvious distress. It’s important to remember that Danyl is a teacher, and this sort of muck-spreading is bound to have a number of upsetting ramifications for him. Although, you know, if Danyl has got this far through his career in education without being the target of merciless bullying from his pupils, then his pupils obviously aren’t trying hard enough. Kids these days, eh? They don’t know they’re born.

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What’s that smell?

Could it be the subtle scent of talentless TV exploitation, the overwhelming fragrance of WAG or the clover-hinted odour of small-man’s syndrome? Freshen up like a pointless media middleman with four new fragrances from X Factor. You’re bound to get lucky if you smell like a TV talent show judge, and nothing says ‘I love you’ like rating your partner’s performance in the sack.

No, really, the X Factor judges are all getting their own perfumes. You’ll be able to buy them in time for Christmas and everything.

The personality cult has hit an all-time low. Forget about the talent, it’s all about the talent-show judge: Someone who can’t sing… but knows what good singing sounds like. “What about Cheryl Cole?” you ask. Yeah OK, she’s behind a desk and she’s not paid to think. She’s paid to endorse products, like Geordie handbags, crap shampoo or TV show perfumes. Cheryl and the other panel members each reportedly earnt £250,000 for selling their smells. We thought we’d give you an idea of what’s in store:

Eau de Simon Cowell: Crisp banknotes blended with petals of egomania and the backside of Sharon Osbourne, this fragrance suits a particularly useless breed of human being, but one with character. Loaded with special pheromones that attract gold-diggers and industry psychopaths.

Essence of Walsh: Irish bog-water and Kensington High Street combine for a special one-off whiff of Louis, designed for two-faced nice guy types who ‘just wanna help you out’. Wearing the Essence of Walsh will get you out of anything. Anything.

Cole 187: A lovely mix of Byker Grove, girl-band knickers and cyanide that changes your voice and somehow makes you less attractive, especially if you’re married. Want to put a stop to those pesky one-liners? Go for Cole 187, it’s absolutely lethal.

Dannii Miasma: Smell like your sister with this refreshing and flirty outback musk. Made from ethically sourced children and crocodile oil, Dannii Miasma can summon your siblings at will. Especially useful when you need a second opinion or some backup in a scrap.

After meeting with experts to discuss their odours this week, the four will release fragrances under the X Factor brand name in time for Christmas, parting thousands of idiots with their money. Simon Cowell is rumoured to be smug about his man-smell, as one source revealed:

“Simon says his will be the top-seller – he’s already winding the other three up.”

Jade Goody musicals, X Factor fragrances… What’s next? We think that saving money has never been more attractive.

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Holidays and mini-breaks.

Folded:

• The BBC (for having the good sense to show Point Break last Sunday as a Patrick Swayze tribute. Roadhouse next please)
• Slovenia (radical)
• Free Batman: Arkham Asylum downloads (only map packs, but they are gratis so stop complaining)
• Saturday morning at the movies (just you and the rest of the loners, but an entire screen nearly all to yourself. Don’t see Fame though, people will think you’re doing stuff)
• Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe (He’s done it again, he’s made Bad Influence ‘09)

Creased:

• Cheapo post-it notes (if they don’t say ‘Post-It’ on the back and they cost £2.00 for 400 then they won’t stick to anything more challenging than a flat horizontal surface)
• Dappy (one third of N-Dubz. The one with the hat. The silliest one, in other words)
• Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff by Deadmau5 (good track, if it didn’t have that bloke from Pendulum singing all over it. Unfortunately it does)
• Il Protagonisto (what Robbie Williams was planning on calling his new album. Seems like senility comes and goes for him these days)
• Cheryl Cole (started out chavvy, went all fit, now back to chavvy again. And as for that skid mark of a new single…)

Cheryl Cole is known for being in Girls Aloud, for marrying a rogue of a football player, and for more-often-than-not being fully dressed while in public.

Not only does the singer/ TV presenter insist on conducting herself in a rather respectable manner, she’s now come out and said that she would not consider doing a nude photo shoot. Elaborating that she would consider it tacky.

Cheryl’s assertion that she would like to remain clothed as often as possible, even in the bath, seems odd. Especially since we just made that last bit up. Not least because her girl group are often onstage clad in what closely-resembles bondage gear. Oh well. We’re guessing S&M gear still technically counts as clothing.Very tight clothing that comes with a free tube of thrush medication.

We’re not all that uncomfortable with public nudity over here, nor are we adverse to talking in an over-familiar manner about celebrity body parts. The commentary is usually based around Robert Pattinson and other annoying/ often shirtless stars, but we are happy to broaden the net to include some fresh meat.

Cheryl is currently wowing people who are easily wowed, as co-host of the X-Factor. By ‘wowing’ we mean ‘astonishing’ people with her feats of not smacking Simon Cowell over the head with a wet fish every time he makes a pre-pubesctent crooner cry.

This success and others have clearly gone to the girl’s head. She now thinks she doesn’t have to bikini pictures/ boob shots to still further her career. We think that her being naked while on the show wouldn’t do much to improve the shows ratings but surely it can’t hurt. Crazy tone-deaf tweenagers will only boost ratings so far.

Difficult as ever, Cheryl states that even for the greater good, she is unwilling to pose nude for a lads’ magazine.

From Showbiz Spy:

The Girls Aloud star and X Factor judge thinks naked photo shoots are tacky. “There’s nothing tasteful about some fruit covering your bits!” she said. “Sometimes a beautiful dress is much more sexy than underwear. Have some class.”

This was a guest blog from Amy Grindhouse, who couldn’t be wonderful if she was made of golden sparkles…

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9 - Hands up who wants to see a trippy pool table? – Geekologie

8 - Even good things can make you sick, thinks Cheryl Cole – Mychemicaltoilet

7 – All the hippest trendy-bendies were at London Fancy Dress Week. See them here – Popsugar

6 – Here’s some sexy actresses with tatts – Interestment

5 - Learn to tell jokes like you’re on telly – Watchwithmothers

4 - Someone appears to be touching Katy Perry’s breasts who isn’t Katy Perry – Amy Grindhouse

3 – Frasier theme tune played backwards = some pretty creepy shiz. Check it out – Best Week Ever

2 - Lindsay Lohan, Debbie Harry, Daisy Lowe. But not as you know them… – Celebrity Clown Face

1 – You know, there was a time when it was totally fine for men to be men…

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And so it was the weekend when the big pulsating brains behind X Factor decided that they might as well do two shows in two days. That equals around three hours of hot singing action, plus judges comments. Dannii Minogue, fast receding into the background, has ceased to say anything of worth, and the occasional flashes to her still, eerie face have carved her a niche as the only subliminal judge on the panel.

The other three still cast their important judgements, and Cheryl has now taken to the stage on at least three occasions to hug the weeping contestants, much like Mother Teresa would, had she ever been given the chance to get out of the slums to judge a singing contest instead. She’s dead now, bless her. Has been for ages.

Of this weekend’s stand out contestants, there was a prison worker who looked like she was on the game. She’s called Faye. She made Simon’s loins go all funny. There was a band called Harmony Hood, who looked like they’d shiv you in the neck. A big lump of a woman had a bash at Janis Joplin, as her granny looked on wearing a humiliating pink vest. And a couple of Pontins maniacs called It Takez 2 plundered their way through some rubbish song, then had a bit of a cry, because they love each other to bits.

During the second helping, one of the tits from One True Voice has reinvented himself as a father-of-two by having unprotected sex with his girlfriend – and now he’s decided that the only way to stop the little blighters from damn near starving to death is to become a pop star. He has, it seems, a rather short memory. A girl called Amy was the recipient of a limp Cheryl cuddle after she started crying because no one liked her singing. She then blubbed so much that everyone changed from “no” to “yes”. An autistic man got through, prompting Cheryl to question in her head whatever could be wrong with being “artistic” anyway. And to cap a fine series of auditions, a genuine street criminal did a love song. It was very moving.

Plus, of course, there were the usual rabble of unfortunates with genuine mental health problems, wheeled out in front of the studio audience to sing from their cages. Particularly jeered were Jarrod Morrison, who took his top off to reveal the body of a hungry prisoner of war. A set of first cousins, who had clearly used “singing practice” as an excuse to secretly practice kissing without their family knowing. Eyebrows will surely be raised in that particular household now. Plus there was the old woman who wanted to have sex with Simon. She was rubbish.

Great stuff.

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Yay! Big Brother’s finished! Yay! That means we can talk about X Factor now! Yay! Until Christmas! Yay! Or until we take our own lives! YAY!

Now, X Factor is still in that awful, unnecessarily long early audition part where people turn up, sing in a hilariously bad way and then go home to develop lifelong violent revenge fixations on Louis Walsh. These episodes barely warrant recaps, to be honest, but how else could we spend our time? Seeing friends? Going outside? Pah.

So here are the X Factor contestants from Saturday who caught our eye – Olly Murs, Demi Cullum and Carla Schettini…

THE ‘GOOD’: Olly Murs

Some things in life are legitimately worse than death. Torture, for example. Or having your face pushed into an obese man’s sweating armpit on the tube in the middle of August. Or – and this is easily the worst of the lot – being called ‘cool’ by Simon Cowell. Because Simon Cowell is the precise scientific opposite of cool. He signed Robson & Jerome. He’s got granny teeth. He nodded enthusiastically when he first heard an Il Divo record. We imagine that his nipples are three inches long. Simon Cowell couldn’t grasp the concept of cool if you spent a month bellowing it into his face through a megaphone positioned two millimetres away from his eyeballs.

And yet, on Saturday’s X Factor, Simon Cowell decided to call Oliver Murs ‘cool’. Olly Murs, for what it’s worth, is essentially what Jack Tweed would be like if he went through a Face/Off-style bodyswap experiment with Bradley from EastEnders. But what was it about Oliver Murs that made Simon Cowell decide that he was cool? He sang Superstition by Stevie Wonder quite well if a little cluelessly, danced like a robot and tried to act out every word of the song like the woman who does the sign language on the Sunday omnibus of Hollyoaks. All in all he was fairly decent. But Simon Cowell thinks that he’s cool so he may as well just hurl himself off a cliff while he still can.

THE BAD: Demi Cullum

We’re repeatedly being told that X Factor is a singing contest and not a personality contest. This is clearly the case, because if X Factor was a personality contest, then that would suggest that Leona Lewis was in possession of some form of personality, which fairly obviously couldn’t be any further from the truth.

However, the old ‘if this was a personality contest, you’d come first’ line was trotted out for Demi Cullem on Saturday’s X Factor. She’d been singing since she was a baby. Her family had all made banners. She’d decided to sing Saving All My Love For You. The problem was that she decided to sing it really loudly and slightly off-key, so it took a couple of lines to realise that she was actually pretty dreadful. We’re not sure what happened after that – we assume she was rejected – because that was the point that Cheryl Cole decided to do that awful self-conscious Mother Teresa thing of hers and give Demi a hug, so that’s when we had an anger stroke and vomited until we blacked out.

THE POINTLESS: Carla Schettini

Came on, gave Louis a tie, sang If You Don’t Know Me By Now by a band she appeared to call Simple Bread while channelling The Count from Sesame Street if he was being attacked by wasps, and then Simon Cowell gave her one of her trademark vicious tongue-lashings. Except he didn’t. He said it was nice to meet her and then gave her a big moony smile. Simon Cowell’s gone soft. This is the worst X Factor ever.

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Just like Christmas, Easter, St George’s Day and the mourning of our office hamster, X Factor has made its mark and become a regular calendar fixture.

Entering series number six, the programme will once again whittle down a select few hopefuls from hundreds of thousands and give them the belief they’ll win an elusive record deal.

And for the rejects? Well for a good five weeks ITV can boost its audience share by editing together programmes that contain utterly shoddy performers. Will there be tears? Burly council estate dads threatening the judges when their tubby daughter is rejected? Quite likely yes, but will there be Japanese monkeys wheeled in to work with the chosen few in bootcamp? We don’t really know, which is why we present our predictions for X Factor 2009.

It would be brilliant if X Factor could be tied up in one neat little package that lasted about a month. Sadly this isn’t going to happen and quite likely, the show will be dragged kicking and screaming into December. By then the contestants will have completed their ‘country & western’, ‘traditional North Korean spoken word’ and ‘90’s acid house’ theme week performances.

Based on five previous series of X Factor, knowing the judges and the way people react to the show, we will know have a stab at guessing what’s going to happen. Don’t go down the betting shop at once now; they’ll assume you’ll have insider information.

• They’ll be a sob story. Every pissing year we are treated to a range of tales that are designed to soften us up and make the judges cut them some slack. From “My dog Brian just got ran over in the car park” to “If I don’t win I won’t be allowed back in my flat” they’ve all been used before. Throw in some soft music and slow motion and you’re there.

• After escaping the sinking ship that is Big Brother, Dermot O’Leary will attempt to build tension and fail miserably. During the audition stages, he’ll try not to laugh at people who have no chance of winning and be used as a human cushion from crushed rejects.

• Simon Cowell will say “you’re the best thing I’ve ever heard.” Amazingly, he said this in series one, two, three, four and five. He also said it on the sly in American Idol. But we’ll forgive him. The main is so rich he can probably ejaculate money. No doubt he’ll make crap put-down comments to rivals and be a total arse as usual, too.

• Aww it’s Cheryl Cole. Nearly everyone in the world loves her. Before Cheryl, there was Sharon Osbourne. Thankfully this replacement worked as now we can look at pretty Cheryl all day. Shame she is married to a bellend footballer. Honest, we’d like to just be in her company and tell her how ace she is. Erm… oh yeah, and she’ll quite likely have the winning act.

• Louis Walsh will continue to have old man moments. By this, we mean he’ll forget where he is and get upset easily when someone slags him off. Louis will also mention he has something to do with Westlife approximately four billion times during each episode.

• Urghh, it’s whiney Dannii Minogue. Why can’t the bosses trade her in for a better model who’d be prettier, less complaining and more charismatic than a cloth? Oh wait, they can! Please get her sister Kylie in. As per normal, she cling on to the show until The Daily Star launch a campaign to get her out so she can go back to releasing crap dance records,

• Guest performers! Rumour is rife that Madonna is going to make an appearance on the show. However, a hidden rule means that the loser on the night gets to be abducted by Madge and join her other African playthings. Michael Jackson was meant to be visiting too, but probably not in Thriller form now.

• It’ll be full of morons. From pensioners nearing death to the obese making music from their gut, we’ll see them all. 95% of people who go to audition sing in front of eleven people at crap karaoke bars and assume a limp applause means they’re mega!

• At the end of it all, we won’t remember what the winner will do. So far, only Leona Lewis has conquered the charts in the UK and USA. Last year’s winner Alexandra Burke has gone quiet and previous winner Leon Jackson has been abandoned by record company bosses. Now you can buy his tears in 500ml bottles for £4 in certain branches of Aldi.

Phew, and that seems to be about it really. Don’t bloody get us started on Strictly Come Dancing, that’s another kettle of onions altogether. The BBC’s move to make Alesha Dixon their version of Cheryl Cole will quite likely go wrong.

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Because, for teaching herself the Pavlovian response of bursting into tears every that Alexandra opened her poxy mouth, Cheryl Cole is now a proper celebrity. So much so that she might release her own clothing line.

Topshop reportedly wants to give Cheryl a Kate Moss-style clothing collection, so soon everybody can look exactly like Cheryl Cole. Well, almost – they’d have to become tiny malnourished midget transvestites in too much make-up if they wanted to look exactly like her. Rules is rules.

Celebrity clothing lines are a bit old hat, really, aren’t they? A year ago everyone was at it, but most of them died on their arse quite quickly. Madonna’s H&M clothing line was short-lived because people worked out that if they wanted to dress like a pensionable divorcee, the PDSA would be cheaper. Lily Allen’s clothing line failed because people heard that the ‘Ewok going to a highschool prom’ look wasn’t going to be very hot in 2008. And Amy Winehouse’s clothing line failed because, well, have you seen Amy Winehouse? Ick.

There’s one exception to this, though, and that’s Kate Moss. When Kate Moss designed a range of clothes for Topshop last year – a process that we imagine consisted of Kate Moss sprawled out on a sofa saying things like “What about a red dress?” or “I know! A lovely blouse!” to some actual fashion designers – people got very excited indeed. This is partly because Kate Moss is a fashion icon, partly because Topshop has the commercial muscle to make her line work and partly because people are so stupid we often dream about stuffing them all into weighted binbags and hurling them into a flooded quarry.

But if Topshop can make a Kate Moss fashion line a success, then it can definitely make a Cheryl Cole fashion line a success. After all, now that she’s spent the last three months bawling like a clot at Alexandra Burke doing Whitney Houston karaoke songs on X Factor, Cheryl Cole is now the nation’s favourite worryingly thin female Geordie talent show judge, and the world is her oyster.

And that’s why the News Of The World is claiming that Topshop is lining up a special Cheryl Cole clothing line for next year:

The 25-year-old discussed it with model Kate Moss, 34, a fortnight ago. The pair had real Chemistry and now Kate is negotiating with pal Sir Philip Green, the Topshop tycoon, about the Girls Aloud star designing her own range. A source revealed: “When Cheryl said she wanted to get into high street fashion, Kate got very, very animated. It’s very likely to happen next year.”

It goes without saying that this Cheryl Cole clothing line will obviously be wildly successful, even though none of the dumpy chavs who will actually buy any of the clothes stand a hope in hell of coming close to Cheryl’s patented ‘fingernail in a lion’s mane’ style.

But Cheryl Cole’s a forthright lady, so whatever the garments in her clothing line look like, we’re sure they’ll reflect her personality perfectly. And you know what that means? it means all her clothes will be made of brass, and they’ll also be wipe-clean to it’s easy to clear up any spillages, like tears or perfume that gets spilled while you try to assault a black toilet attendant or vomit that your footballer husband has puked over another woman during a bout of drunken extramarital sexual intercourse.

You know, because she’s thoughtful like that.

Read more:

Cheryl plots high street takeover – News Of The World

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However, there’s just one little thing that could derail the entire show, and that’s that the X Factor judges are being great big babies. According to reports, X Factor judges Louis Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole are all fighting because some of them don’t want to sit next to other judges and one of them has a slightly bigger dressing room than the rest.

What’s more, Cheryl Cole doesn’t like Louis Walsh because he’s got BO, and Louis Walsh doesn’t like Dannii Minogue because she keeps her lunch inside an ice cream tub instead of a real lunchbox like he does, and Dannii Minogue heard Carly Robinson from 7F tell her best friend’s cousin that Cheryl Cole had nits and was a lesbian IDST.

We’ll admit that we haven’t really been paying attention to X Factor this year. That’s mainly because, whenever we’ve tried to watch it, someone has been crying. If the contestants aren’t crying because they’re happy or because they’re sad or because their dead rabbit’s last wish was for them to enter X Factor and it’ll never get to see them succeed, then Cheryl Cole’s crying because, like, getting paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to tell a bad singer that they’re bad at singing is the most difficult thing she’s ever had to do.

And if neither of those are happening, then chances are we’re crying because X Factor is shit and it makes us want to kill ourselves.

Tomorrow sees the start of the X Factor live finals – the culmination of months of hard work after which one lucky contender, if they believe in themselves and strive to be the best they can be, might wind up a tenth as famous as Chico.

However, it’s been reported that tensions between the X Factor judges might threaten to tear the entire show apart, and it’s all down to who sits next to who and who and who gets the biggest dressing room. Apparently, the biggest faultlines lay between the following:

Louis Walsh – An X Factor stalwart, Louis Walsh has been on the show since the beginning, apart from the time when he decided to spuriously resign for a week and the other time when Simon Cowell fired him for about 30 minutes. Louis Walsh doesn’t like fellow X Factor judge Dannii Minogue, because he’s loyal to previous X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne – who Dannii didn’t get on with – even though it was Sharon Osbourne who once threw a glass of water over Louis on a live TV show.

Dannii Minogue - Unfamous sister of Kylie Minogue, Dannii Minogue joined X Factor last year and didn’t get on with Sharon Osbourne because Sharon went on TV with clingfilm wrapped around her head and Dannii thought she was mocking her heavily botoxed face. After the rift caused Sharon to leave X Factor, Dannii Minogue decided she also didn’t like her replacement Cheryl Cole, because Cheryl Cole is young and pretty and sexy and Dannii Minogue was supposed to be the young, pretty sexy one on X Factor even though she’s almost 40 and has a face like a brass doorhandle. Dannii also doesn’t get on with Louis Walsh because, oh, who cares.

Cheryl Cole – Nobody likes Cheryl Cole because she cries all the bastard time.

Got all that? Good. Now here’s The Mirror to explain their new scrap:

Dannii Minogue insists she should sit apart from Louis Walsh – and the feeling is mutual. But all-powerful Simon, 49, likes to sit next to this year’s new girl Cheryl Cole, 25. A source explained: “Dannii is fuming she is placed next to Louis. The pair are well known for their disagreements and both are not keen on having to sit next to each until Christmas. Simon wants Cheryl beside him – but she wants to sit beside Louis!”

What’s more, there’s one dressing room in the X Factor studios that’s slightly bigger than the others, and Louis, Dannii and Cheryl all apparently want it. And we’re promised that these arguments are real, and really could put the future of X Factor in jeopardy. You know, just like how they’re real every year and aren’t just a way of getting people to stop watching Strictly Come Dancing.

Still, whatever stops people from remember they’re going to have to spend the next three months of their lives watching endless piss-weak Whitney Houston karaoke, eh?

But what you don’t see is the sadness behind Cheryl Cole’s eyes. The sadness of a woman whose husband got hammered on booze once and ended up having all sorts of depraved puke-sex with a slapper who wasn’t her.

Actually you can’t see that at all any more, because Cheryl Cole isn’t sad at all. In an appearance on Jonathan Ross to be shown on Friday, Cheryl Cole wore her wedding ring and told everyone that she’s patched up her marriage once and for all. The moral of this story, obviously, is that true love endures. And that if you earn £100k a week you can probably get away with vomiting over a few slags every now and then.

Cheryl Cole has had an excellent year so far. Usually her life is full of boring stuff like squabbles with Lily Allen and not eating much, but this year it’s been pedal-to-the-metal excitement right from the get-go, the lucky cow.

In January it was revealed that Cheryl Cole’s husband Ashley had cheated on her with a rough-looking girl he ended up puking on. This sort of constant public humiliation doesn’t sound particularly brilliant admittedly, but ask yourself this -  would Cheryl still be one of the judges on this year’s X Factor if it didn’t happen?

Well, yes, in all fairness she probably would. But forget that, because this is the story of Cheryl Cole’s uplifting journey – the journey of a victim of infidelity who learnt to soar to ever-greater professional heights by casting off the shackles of marriage and becoming a free woman.

Or at least it would be if Cheryl Cole hadn’t decided to pretend that Ashley Cole had never done anything wrong in the first place and got back together with him. Then it becomes the journey of a victim of infidelity who got a job on a talent show even though she’s stupid and her husband is a wanker.

Anyway, now that she’s on the telly – and everyone knows that being on the telly is the only way you can ever be truly happy – Cheryl Cole is truly happy again, and she’s been on Jonathan Ross to tell everyone that, although it was hard, she’s completely forgiven Ashley and he’s free to go and cheat on her again whenever he wants. Or something. Metro reports:

“I was tempted to put it [the ring] back on – in his head!’ she said. She then defended her husband’s mistake telling: ‘There’s something about celebrities having a perfect life; people need to relax and realise we’re human too. There’s no such thing as a private life in this industry,’ she told Jonathan.

Actually, for all our cynicism, it’s nice to see that a couple like Cheryl and Ashley Cole can put something as serious as serial infidelity behind them in the name of love. Love and definitely not anything else, like the fact that Ashley Cole earns four times as much as the average man’s annual salary every single week. Definitely not that.

Of course, as Cheryl Cole said, we shouldn’t forget that they’re just human and, as such, they’re probably both filled with enormous regret over their actions in the last year. Honestly, Cheryl Cole must be kicking herself about patching up her marriage before she could get a couple of hacky ghostwritten books and a decent reality TV show about her struggle out. That really has to sting.