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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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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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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Spreading his arms wide he’ll say he caught Untanga, the beast of the local lake. Sadly though, it was the one that got away and he only caught an abandoned shopping trolley.

Sharon Osborne has something in common with our friend. Ever since she left X Factor, everyone has lost interest in her. But don’t worry, Sharon is trying to reignite a war with another one of the programme’s boring additions – Dannii Minogue. We can’t confirm or deny if Sharon reeks of fish like Mike The Pike”. Only Ozzy knows that.

In the 2008 series of X Factor, there was a slight mix-up on the judging panel. Music’s worst enemy Simon Cowell remained to sink his demonic claws in to some young-faced hopeful, Louis Walsh chipped in occasionally with his jolly Irish twang and the less successful Minogue sister was just thankful she didn’t have to join the line at the dole office.

Sadly though, changes have to be made and water-throwing Sharon Osborne had to go. She’d already thrown a strop earlier in the series when she walked off the show after all her shitty acts got voted out in the first few weeks. Being offered a measly £1.6million wasn’t enough for Sharon to endure some boring Australian for another year and she decided to bugger off and run her mouth on other reality shows like America’s Got Talent.

But X Factor got a new judge and a few extra viewers as millions of perverts tuned in to see the lovely Cheryl Cole. Watching it with the sound down was good enough for us as we gazed in awe at Cheryl’s lovely face. So was Sharon Osborne pissed off that they replaced her with a much nicer-looking judge and forced Dannii to become the older, wrinkly and annoying women?

Well kind of…

Like some sort of messed-up plot of Hollyoaks or Skins with random drugs thrown in, Sharon thinks Dannii is only using the show as a tool to get into Simon Cowell’s pants. Meanwhile Leona Lewis is crying in the corner because she hasn’t been moulded completely into an American singer and has been told she must instead look like a horse. OK, not all of that may be true but the accusation of Dannii going after Simon’s nutsack apparently is.

In an interview with Piers Morgan, who no doubt managed to somehow make the questions relate to him, Sharon said:

“All Dannii wanted to do was fuck Simon Cowell. That’s why she’s on the show.”

Great. We think. We expect a swift attack from Dannii as she finds out where Sharon lives and hides all her shoes. Ha! That’ll teach her. Thers’ nothing like a schoolgirl slagging match. Before we know it, they’ll be pulling each other’s hair extensions and fake noses off behind the bike sheds.

By the time the new series of X Factor rolls round, we expect Louis Walsh to be replaced by Robocop and Simon Cowell to still be there but in the form of a giant arse that he slowly disappears up. But as long as lovely Cheryl is there we don’t mind. She can do no wrong. Apart from ignoring our calls.

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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?