Winona Ryder once said: “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count,” clearly she was watching Skins where, in the opening three episodes of the season, two people have been brutally butchered from the cast list. We haven’t seen one funeral.

In fact the closest we come to Richard Curtis territory is a seaside elegy and mere reference to a wedding. Obviously this is too inherently British for the residents of Bristol who are more content to wallow.

It’s all getting totes emosh up in here which is no doubt why the writers this week introduced us all to a new plucky character to reconfigure the group dynamic. He’s gay too, so that not-graphic-enough-sex-scene ticks another demographic box for the youth enveloping programme.

New Gay and dice man about town Alex got the spotlight this evening along with fag-hag Liv who’s back on the booze and off the rails, on fine form as all of her associates decide that communication is overrated. Instead, they opt for a series of scowls, smiles, and generally fraught looks.

Alex, despite the weird face and normal name, was actually a rather good character to introduce at such a late stage. They brought him in shrouded in a smug cloud of smuggish mystery, like an amateur Derren Brown looking for work in a bowling alley, but he turned out to be a well-rounded young man who actually introduced the concept of ‘see you at college’ to the group.

Obviously nobody saw anyone at college because this programme is teaching us all that you don’t need to learn things – you just need to know how to cheat at poker. We can recommend the DVD special features on the film 21 if you’re looking for a quick guide to card counting. Or just watch The Real Hustle if you can bear it.

Anyway, it was a strangely melancholy episode for Skins. With half of the cast dead or mysteriously absent, it only left a few faces to glumly teach us the art of the awkward silence and boy did they stay stony faced in solidarity. You know when your friend dies and you just knock back a few shots and don’t move on? That is exactly what happened for an hour last night on E4 – at least we had it in HD is all we’re saying. Of course it wouldn’t be Skins if there wasn’t time for a few parties, a quick flash of the tits and some reciting of Nietzsche.

Dead Grace would have loved the send-off, but she might have wondered where her boyfriend was. Rich, hi if you’re reading this –  please do come back and tell us you’re not in a mental institution for hallucinating all those moments with the one you loved after she had been dead at least 24 hours, cheers.

Frankly nothing really happened this week and it is easily the best episode of the series so far, which is a bit backwards. This is possibly because this mundanity is what being a teenager is actually like. It’s not smuggling drugs in the desert and the like. It’s sitting around, not knowing what to say.

It won’t last though. TV won’t allow a character to languish. It’ll be bags of ket in no time, with yawning predictability.

Another week, another loosely adhered to theme for Dancing on Ice. This week the theme was “Pop”, although really it should’ve been “Katarina Disagrees”. But that wouldn’t have fitted in so well with One Direction’s appearance, so pop it was.

Some teenage boys with suits and sideways hair weren’t going to stop Katarina, though. She has monumental cleavage AND Olympic medals. Nothing’s getting in her way.

Not even fellow Olympian Chemmy Alcott, who Katarina infamously called “big” a few weeks back, before begging her not to ever do any lifts ever again. Chemmy wasn’t having any of it though, and decided to do a handstand on her partner’s leg. Queen Katarina tried to pretend that she only wanted to keep Chemmy safe for the next Olympics. Nobody believed her.

Unlike Rosemary, who everyone believes all the time, bcause she’s lovely. Which is why the evil overlords of ITV decided that she had to be tipped upside down and spun round in circles until she was nearly sick all over the ice. Katarina loved it and gave her a seven. Everyone else was deeply, deeply indifferent.

As they were when Jennifer Ellison took to the ice. According to her VT, she needed to “go for it”, which is becoming such a recurring theme that we expect it will soon be given its own show. What Jennifer went for this week was some seriously unfortunate hair, supposedly because she was skating to ‘Vogue’. Really, we think the stylist just hates her.

Still, at least Jennifer can take comfort in the fact that the stylist hates Sam more. He was given a very, very dodgy blonde wig and made to skate to Wham. Which was presumably punishment for dropping his partner repeatedly in practice. Or for forcing everyone to see him in bed, as he did at start of his routine. It’s one or the other.

Despite his best efforts to traumatise the entire country, Sam still lost out on his attempt to become “Most Disturbing Person on Dacing on Ice”. Because Chico and Heidi were there.

Heidi skated to the caterwauling wreck that is Jessie J, and decided to pay homage through her wardrobe. Which was a catsuit. With spangles. On the vadge. Again.

Chico said the word “fluidity” and then donned a skin-tight silver t-shirt, leaving the entire country feeling more queasy than Rosemary after her upside-down-vom-spin. Robin told Chico to “keep something for himself”. We assume he meant the t-shirt. Please, please, make Chico keep that t-shirt for himself.

Whilst the midfield were battling their wardrobes, Jorgi and Matt were continuing their ice dance war. Except that it was a bit one-sided this week, because while Jorgi was skating around in a paedophile’s dream of a school uniform and getting top scores, Matt had ruined his back a bit.

Not really ruined, you understand. Just ruined enough to make him miss two days of training and struggle a bit with the sexual assault that is the sit lift. Robin and Louie thought he pulled it off. Katarina, shockingly, disagreed. She gave him 6.5 and a shake of her shoulder pads.

And then she ruined all of her credibility.

It all started when Andy came out and did a weird stomping dance to the Proclaimers. We were expecting Katarina and her bosom to point out that it was an awkward crock of dung, but instead she tried to tell everyone that it was entertaining. The lying bitch.

And she didn’t even try and stop Robin and Louie from throwing endless clichés at Sebastian. Apparently, he is on a journey, and has a lot to offer, and various other inane and predictable things. We were mostly just annoyed with him for trying a strange new jump and not falling over.

Also trying very, very hard not to fall over was Charlene, who was given a fast routine and a Lady Gaga outfit, which she then used to terrify everyone. It turns out that Charlene can do the splits. So she did. In the air. With her ladybits pointing at the camera. It was part of her attempt to ditch her status as the “skate-off queen” and get straight through to next week.

It didn’t work.  At all. Not even a little bit. Because she didn’t just end up in the skate off with Sam, she got booted off the show. So now we know; when middle-aged women flash their lycra-clad bits at you, bad things happen.

Now can someone please tell Madonna?

It’s a brand new week, scum buckets, and to start the downward decline is a brand spanking new episode of Skins and boy oh boy is it miserable this time around! Are you lucky?

First, let’s get real for a moment folks. This is the second episode, so they have to bring out the big guns now that everyone’s back in boring old Bristol and not some country that bristles with sexual heat, so of course, the writers needed to make an episode that tackles the burning issues—as long as something is hotter than fire we’re all happy right?

Of course there were parties and of course there was sex there was even some minimal drug use, but who isn’t rocking a casual line of coke these days. Where was the hard liquor though? We all remember the days when a bottle of vodka lasted for one quick swig, but now it seems everything’s a little too melancholy for anything stronger than a can of lager. It’s so down in the dumps this week that Phil Collins made the soundtrack when not even rain was in the air. These writers need to get their shit together and go on a rollercoaster or something.

This week it was Rich’s turn for the spotlight as he went bat-shit mental dreaming about his dead girlfriend—if you haven’t watched it yet then that right there is what we in the biz like to call a spoiler. Yeah Grace is dead now, they went to Switzerland and everything because it’s okay to euthanise (MURDER) people there. We told you there were issues. Though we’re not really sure how it tackles them in any way whatsoever, it sort of just waved at it from a passing car and said; “hey this is still a thing right? Guys?” it is indeed still a thing. Can you imagine a world where Skins solves the whole euthanasia argument because that makes us want to lethal inject our perfectly healthy bodies to death.

More in-keeping with you heathens and what proved so popular over the past five years, the show throws a party and really cleverly, they invite all their Facebook ‘friends’ to come and have an averagely good time while enjoying some mindless anarchy because, “that’s what the kids are into now right?”

Let’s all say this together…R I O T S.

See we told you there were issues, plural. Nobody can deny that’s an issue, that’s the sort of issue Skins can realistically grapple with and grapple it does. Except these upper class pritt sticks decide it’s all just a bit of harmless fun and wear their headache inducing clothes to a massive mansion to indulge in the meagre activities of the plebians. They’re all scum buckets who can’t even cry on cue so they just eat biscuits instead. If anybody offers you a biscuit when you’re sad that your friend is in a coma, you have our authority to crumble that bourbon up and put it in their hair. They probably love their precious hair. Dicks.

Then set fire to their faces and send them to Switzerland.

So it’s all a little sad this week, you might have even cried if you’re a pansy, but what we all really learnt is that you should never treat your phone like Rich does because it totally ruins the illusion of speaking to your dead girlfriend. Maybe the real issue the writers were tackling this week was insanity; there are just too many bloody layers for us all to wrap our heads around. These people are geniuses in the guise of tossers that’s what we think and you should too if you know what’s good for you.

And-roid Warhol. A psychedelic treehouse. A tank made of cheese. If there were any words we could employ to try and sway you into watching Noel Fielding’s newest “offering”, it would be these.

They show us many, many things. That Noel Fielding is sticking to his tried and tested roots of clashing the realistic with the absurd, with brain warping determination. That he clearly takes himself either far too seriously, or not serious enough. And that there clearly isn’t such a thing as flogging a dead equine.

We all liked The Mighty Boosh, that was unashamedly brilliant [No we didn't. Some of us hated it and everyone who watched it.  Ed]. Everything from the ground to The Moon was dead-on: keep things simple and fun and show everyone why Caroline Quentin probably shouldn’t be in a mismatched family unit. The mixture of boring situations clashing with fantastical characters kept us coming back for more. But Luxury Comedy seems trite and, slightly forced. Watch. Watch us how we’re magically become Noel Fielding.

“Papier-mache hedgehogs burrowing into Dave Carpets The Carpenter Apprentice afro play banjoleles about not being about to return a pair of combats to a shop because the mandatory 28-day guarantee was up.”

It’s as easy as guessing the lie detector results on Jeremy Kyle. Anyone can do it. But Fielding and Barratt (his cohort on The Mighty Boosh) were a living embodiment, almost of the ethos, behind it.

They looked the absurd parts. But with Barratt off fathering twins and doing other more serious things, it lacks the physical oomph that the straight laced, depressing Howard Moon brought. With no grounding force of banality to keep Fielding grounded, it loses some of it’s individuality. Actually, Fielding loses some of his individuality at the same time. Oddly.

The problem is that the formula behind Fielding’s comedy is flawless; take something ordinary and make it look as out of place as possible, then add a dark undertone (which is where the best jokes always lie: just look at Nighty Night – incidentally created by Julian Barratt’s wife, Julia Davis). Which is great.

But eventually, seeing bizarre things becomes routine and ordinary. Which is where Fielding seems to have failed. There was nothing new, or groundbreaking about this foray on a new channel. You can sum it up by one word. One word that Noel Fielding probably never needs to use because all of his clothes seem to look uncomfortable to wear. Like you would want everyone to have a quick peek at your balls.

Unfortunately, and it does hurt us to say this, but Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is stereotyped. You know what you’re getting with it. It does what it says on the tin, except the ‘Comedy’ part. Or the ‘Luxury’.

So ‘Noel Fielding’ then.

Shame. We’ll always have Mod Foxes.

This week’s Dancing on Ice was apparently Movie Week. Really, it was just dodgier outfits than usual, a few rubbish puns and some nicely manufactured drama. There were injuries! There were dangerous lifts! And there was Heidi Sugababe’s golden vadge! Her terrifying, terrifying golden ladybits.

Before old Bigface Sugababe assaulted our eyes with her genitals though, the rest of the skaters were subjected to injury and actual sexual assault. Like Jennifer Ellison, who has ruined her ribs, apparently. Which was INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC and caused her to change her routine at the last moment and look like she was about to die when she came off the ice.

We did not feel the required amount of sympathy. Although that’s maybe because we have no soul.

Trying to nab herself some non-existent sympathy was Charlene, who gatecrashed Jennifer’s ruined ribs party. She forgot to do the requisite crying and looking upset, but she did dress up as Marilyn Monroe. Which was frankly terrifying.

But not as terrifying as what happened to Rosemary Conley. Poor, sweet old Rosemary Conley. Her partner grabbed her by the ladybits and hoiked her onto his shoulder, which looked both uncomfortable and wrong. It was a bit like watching someone molest your gran. But with added lycra, and some extra sequins.

It wasn’t just the old who were being interfered with on live TV though. Jorgie Porter also found herself being touched inappropriately when she was made to do a “sit lift”. Which involved her quite literally sitting on her partner’s hand as he held her above his head and kept a tight grip on her pants. At least, he said it was her pants. We didn’t want to think about it too hard.

Whatever was going on in Jorgie’s pants clearly worked, as she found herself top of the leader board and pitched against the previous week’s skating master Matt. Who is more about actual assault than sexual assault; he dropped his partner AND crushed her in rehearsal. Which clearly scared the judges enough to make sure they gave him the same score as Jorgie. Which was just bloody boring of them, really.

Person least likely to assault anyone meanwhile was Sebastian, who needed to be reminded that he even had a partner at all. He and Brianne had been working all week to remember to be good with each other, which sort of kind of worked. A bit. Apparently Sebastian’s “style” was cocking things up a bit. Whatever his “style” is.

Down at the other end of the leaderboard, ITV was rubbing salt in the wounds of Corey Feldman’s failed career by making him skate to a song from his own movie, Stand by Me. He responded by announcing himself to be a great dancer. His only evidence seemed to be that he was friends with Michael Jackson. Clearly Michael was already heavily sedated when he told Corey that he was a great dancer though, because Corey was dismal. Really, really dismal.

A bit like Mark of Sam and Mark. According to partner Frankie he’s improved, but she doesn’t have a surname and does have an annoying face, so we chose to ignore her. They spent as much of their routine as possible off of the ice and then were the happiest anyone has ever been to make it into double figures. It’s good to know they’ve got low standards.

The other half of Sam and Mark, meanwhile, was trying his absolute best to kill his partner with a backflip. On live TV. He’d been cocking it up all week and throwing her off in seemingly random directions, but he annoyingly managed not to throw her onto her head in front of the entire nation. He did do some really embarrassing kung-fu dancing though. The poor bastard.

Also struggling with a move was Chemmy, who was scared of a lift. What she should’ve been scared of though, was the wrath of God. Because Chemmy started off dressed as a nun, and then did some stripping. The two of them couldn’t get it up though. The lift, that is. Because God didn’t want them to. Then Katarina Witt told Chemmy that she was a Big Woman, because Chemmy had insulted God, and so God told Katarina to call her fat.

It wasn’t just Chemmy’s costume that was playing silly buggers though. Chico got stuck trying to be romantic and passionate in that most romantic of outfits, the boilersuit. Andy got his hand stuck in his ridiculous Grease wig. And Heidi. Oh dear God. Heidi.

After horrifying us with shots of her golden catsuit throughout the show, Heidi appeared as the final skater. Because she wanted to maximise the amount of time she could horrify us for. Apparently the catsuit was part of her attempt to “sexify” a Bond theme. We definitely became very well acquainted with her anatomy, but it was more traumatic than sexy.

Still, somebody somewhere clearly liked it, because after being unceremoniously dumped into the skate off in the first week, she made it through. As did everyone except for Charlene and Mark, who were forced to skate again.

It turned out that Mark’s “improvement” wasn’t enough, and he got sent home, leaving poor Sam alone. Hopefully he’ll realise that life is actually better without Mark, thus leading to the end of Sam and Mark as any kind of televisual unit and making the world a far, far better place. We’ll be voting to keep him in. Because a world without Sam and Mark is something we’ll never stop hoping for.

We have two more weeks of The X Factor left, and then we can go and do something else in our brains. We know. It’s amazing. Amazing how it’s all gone so marrow-achingly slow isn’t it? Amazing how time can absolutely not shift for three months in the slightest sometimes.

Amazing. A bit like how 2001: A Space Odyssey covered thousands of years scoping from the dawn of men to beyond the infinite. Or a bit like how The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lasted infinity-hundred hours long and achieved absolute zippo. A bit like that, a BIT like that…

And hey! Talking of clutching at straws…

This week on The X Factor it was of course Psychological Meltdown Motown week and Unrelated Other Song To Fill In The 50 Minute Gap week. Well, it’s about bloody time.

Last week we ‘lost’ Janet Devlin, and by ‘lost’ we of course mean “We sat on our clammy posteriors and watched as her popularity slowly dwindled into nothing as appropriated by the people who do actually vote for X Factor.” We just like to be concise.

Okay so, life changing recording contract, “I want to be in the final so much”, “I am excited”, and all that sort of thing. That’s what we’re contending with as we cross through into the semi-final, so kind of a big deal. Not in the scope of reality or anything, but in the scope of Louis Walsh’s bath nights schedule for the week, it’s absolutely paramount.

For your viewing pleasure or something to that effect, we of course had:

• AMELIA LILY!
• MISHA B!
• MARCUS… We usually forget his name and have to Google it! Marcus Brigstocke possibly!
• LITTLE MIX!

There you are. No no. YOU’RE welcome.

FACTLET: The X Factor Opening Titles go on for 2 minutes and 35 seconds. You know what you can do in 2 minutes and 35 seconds?

*Do 2 minutes and 35 seconds of a task that ultimately will take much longer but perhaps might be more emotionally fulfilling!
*Listen to the entirety of Wipeout by The Sufaris with no burden to bear!
*But mostly the first thing we mentioned!

For those of you haven’t watched it/did not take part in the Ludovico experiment this week/think that Dermot O Leary fella is a bit ‘ehhh’, we have provided you with a blow by blow fully detailed description of this week’s dance routine, because we are kindly and attentive and want to mother you. No no, seriously guys, it’s absolutely no bother.

1. The X Factor doors open to the tune of Do You Love Me by The Contours, which is a song about emotional insecurity and doing the mashed potato.
2. Dermot appears in badly fitting suit perpetrating a basic Stationary Hand Jive routine.
3. Scantily clad women stand next to him perpetrating a basic Stationary Hand Jive routine.
4. Dermot jumps a bit to the left, and then a bit to the right. (This bit’s important.)
5. Dermot turns around and shakes around his backside like he’s in the SEX PISTOLS or something.
6. Dermot looks embarrassed, and all the girls run away.

But, hey. That’s just involuntary abstinence for you.

“Tonight they’re facing the toughest judges of them all. That’ll be YOU,” Dermot warned us in the sort of Orwell-esque manner of omnipotence that only he can pull off and first up to perform, and for an absolutely incredibly sparse chance at performing in the live final because she’s been unreasonably edited to fuck from Day 1, was Misha B!

This week in her everlasting menagerie of Humble Field Trips, the X Factor producers forced Misha visit lots of sick children to try and evoke some sort of caring in her artificial vestibule of hatred that the X Factor producers created in the first place. It didn’t work obviously. Slag.

Misha sang the covered to death Dancing in the Street in a dress made out of broken records, and here is a carefully orchestrated joke about that.

Hey Misha! Maybe you should change the record!

(dress!)

…

Alright.

Well everybody loved that performance, especially Kelly who managed to unfurl 80 extra hidden meanings from the Mick Jagger barnstomper by saying “You’re not just dancing in the street! You’re dancing on OTHER indeterminate locations too!” Seriously, this woman is the effin’ Sphinx. Exhausting. Then we had to go through the WHOLE Louis Walsh says Berry Gordy is dead thing which is a bit of a silly thing to say considering at no point on Saturday the 3rd of December was Berry Gordy actually dead. No biggy Louis, we all make mistakes.

And then there was Amelia Lily with Aint No Mountain High Enough, which is a song about how no level of altitude can keep James Stewart from dressing Kim Novack as a double of his dead wife. Or something. You know, WE’VE GOT A LOT ON.

This all led to us being very confused over whether she looked darn attractive in a 60s Nancy Sinatra way or just a bit trashy in a modern day Twiggy M&S advert kinda way. Either way, it’s a bit of a grey area for us, and it’s probably easier for us not to bother. The dress code of the dancers seemed altogether a little bit more confusing. Houndstooth and tartan? Is that ‘The 60s‘? Let’s just check Wikipedia’s page for the 60s just to make sure. Blah blah blah – radical political change – blah blah blah – centre left social reforms – yadda yadda yadda – The African American civil rights movement… Oop. Hang about. “EVERYONE IN THE 60S LIKED TO WEAR FUNKY PATTERNS” it says. Ah, fair enough. Amelia sang the song vaguely well, basically giving her the exact capabilities as all the Jesuses. That sounds pretty serious. Let’s not deal with that.

“YOU SOUND AMAZING!”IOO”JOJI!IO!HIDBISH!” Kelly Rowland reported in a kind of cerebrovascular accident kinda way. (This is the same Kelly Rowland who wrote the song Stole, which is about a song with a girl who has same size hands as Marilyn Monroe, FYI)

Little Mix up next, singing We Are Nonthreatening But Women Nonetheless! By The Supremes. Ah, that wouldn’t be The Supremes, the collective compromising of quite a fair few women singing at the same time would it? Because… Wait, hold the phone. Don’t Little Mix do something to that effect? Flaming, third degree burns Nora! That’s too much of a coincidence. Assumingly then this was going to be absolutely amazing. So, what degree of amazing did it end up being we hear you cry whilst you claw at our ankles sobbing for catharsis? WELL. If only we had some sort of scale…

Oh dear. So what went wrong? HOW COULD THIS HAVE POSSIBLY GONE WRONG? What is THAT ANSWER? Will we ever even truly know?

Well, they didn’t sing it very well and someone forgot the words. Next week, we’ll sort all that Atlantis and Jack the Ripper stuff out everyone keeps harping on about. Anyway, hot blonde baritone Mix kind of saved it a bit though, which our Spiritual Guide Gary Barlow later points out saying that Peri (Oop. careful Gary, if you name them, you might generate an emotional attachment) should be the lead singer.

“That’s what this group is missing. A lead singer.”

A very interesting Robbie Williams ’90s solo career-y point well made.

“DIANA ROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” – Louis added.

It’s actually something of an achievement that The X Factor has gone this far in the competition (Say about..six weeks) without featuring Robbie Williams actually. And here we were worried that the show was…dare we say it, missing the mark of what constitutes as entertainment! Pah. Oh how wrong we were!

Oh wait, there he is with Marcus Collins wearing a cravat. Ah well, we had a good run.

Yeah, that brings us quite messily on to Marcus Collins, who was performing a song that may or may not make us want to ‘get up and dance’ as the dubstep generation like to call all that sex these days. Oh, alright. Not really. God, we’re such jokers. He sang My Girl, which he presumably sang about one of his female platonic friends that he is not boning dry. Ah, so that’s why Robbie Williams came in to give him some advice this week! Gotcha. Gotcha. (Banal early 2000s Robbie Williams homosexuality jokes! Yes we ARE really pushing the boat out this week, thanks for playing!)

“I was hoping you were singing for me.” Kelly told Marcus. Marcus smiles and nods respectfully, as that is all he can offer her.

Mi-Icantbelieveimintouchingdistanceandidontwantittoend-sha B was up again, singing “Humble” the Gary Barlow remix, by SadPink. It’s good-at-singing kind of good. But that doesn’t matter.

Amelia came back singing I’M WITH YOU by AVRIL LAVIGNE which is a song about feelings and being with someone but them not actually being there. Still confused? Okay. It’s like An Affair to Remember with early 2000s pop-punk, and when we say ‘like’ we mean EXACTLY THE SAME. Deborah Kerr probably got a bit angsty and wore a tie with a vest top in her spare time too. We’ve all been there. And we all made it through. Clearly.

Amelia sang the song in that classic Amelia Lily Loud singing/Whisper Singing/Louder Singing/Nicole Kidman Bronchitis Moulin Rouge Whisper singing way. But does this mean that she didn’t absolutely definitely mean EVERY SINGLE WORD? Of course she did! God, we really aren’t taking this very seriously tonight. Apologies to Avril Lavigne, or alternatively: People with actual problems. Cheers guys.

“With that song [That song being ‘I’m With You’ by Avril  Lavigne just to remind you] it’s like you are telling a story. And you have to sing that song as if you are telling a story.”

Which you’ll be shocked into a catatonic state to hear Tulisa came out with at one point. But it turns out it’s actually a very fair point! Seeing as:

“I’m With You” by Avril Lavigne is about Avril Lavigne standing on a bridge waiting in the dark for someone to come and take her hand, and then if there’s time, take her somewhere new. Now, she doesn’t know who this IS, but rest assured she is with them in a metaphorical sense despite him not being physically there. Now CALL US PICKY but we’d think of that more as an experimental William S Burroughs Beat Novel more than a story, per se Tulisa. But hey, ‘that’s just us’.

“Pipes” Kelly Rowland added.

Marcus Collins was up again, or if you prefer, Marcus“afewmonthsagoiwasahairdresserworking9to5andnowiminlondon&itssofunny” Collins, as is is his more catchy pseudonym, sang Can You Feel It. Well, when we say ‘Sang Can You Feel It’ we mean more like ‘inquisitively questioned Can You Feel It in a tentative yet hopeful for one singular sensual brush of the skin of another kind of way’, which we assume is the way Michael Jackson intended it to sound! Hurray!

Sadly, he didn’t muse on what ‘she’ would look like with a ‘chimney on her’, which would have been amazing.

And finally, Little Mix came along to sing ‘If I were a Boy’ which doesn’t work as a group song at all, so Tulisa spits mentals and starts rifling off every single local region in the UK and telling them to vote for Little Mix, like how Winston Churchill used to do when he was trying to get people to vote for Little Mix.

The Little Mixicans (As nobody should EVER call them) say something about how ‘they don’t want to be perfect’ which is why they sang the song about wanting to be boys, because women are biologically inferior as we all know – and then everything came crashing to a close in a mass of violent shrugs.

Shit on that ending, Shawshank Redemption.

THE RESULTS

*Call us picky, but we absolutely loathe Justin Bieber’s bollocks excuse for a Christmas song and don’t like Justin Bieber at all or would ever try and single out any redeeming quality to the fabric of his existence.

*Bye Misha. That’ll teach you to try and bring your talent and very broad vocal range on to The X Factor.

*The sound editors surpass themselves by playing Dream Is Collapsing from the Inception soundtrack over Marcus’  VT where he talks exclusively about how getting through to the final would be his dream. Very good.

*We got to hear that really emotionally taxing Jessie J ballad again, and only for the third time in the space of three weeks. Oh Mr Ambassador, you really are spoiling us etc.

*It is uncanny just how much Tulisa looks like Debenhams and Mkat  sometimes.

*Perez Philtrum appears in the ad break even though nobody wanted him to.

*Kelly Rowland uses soliloquy in pop music, and it is theoretically hells-a-mazing. It was perhaps the most precise mixture of Orbital and Dr Faustus in RnB pop history we have ever seen. But we’re just speculating.

Next week is the final. Or as we like to call it: ‘The Hecklerspray Christmas Party where we’ll deliver a really drab, hungover last minute mess of a review’ This means we’ll only be putting in aprox. 5 billion percent more effort into the review than ITV will be putting into the actual contents of the show, so we’ll call that fifteen love.

Well, what another hotbed of mayhem and violation of societal norms it’s been on the X Factor this week.

Whatever you do, don’t let us go on and on about it, kay?

This week on The X Factor, the sound editors got in an extra crate of Aftershock (Spiced Berry black, obviously. They’re not squares) and decided to insult our intelligence! Yeah, as opposed to the norm of respecting us with sincere background music choices that somehow formulate a narrative on a reality entertainment show. Yeah, truth man!

For those of you who sat in the dark murmuring, “Mother, please. I don’t want to” last week, instead of watching The X Factor, never fear – for we have a handy update for you!

That’s right: Life isn’t fair.

This week however, there’ll be none of that because we are now three live shows away from finding out who will be the ultimate winner of THE HALF-BAKED 2011 SERIES OF X FACTOR! We genuinely have no idea who could possibly Marcus Collins win this year, so it’s going to be a really tough Marcus Collins race to find out who will Marcus Collins reach the Marcus Collins crown, that’s for sure. No idea. Anyway, it’s all rather important. And as Gary BarWOAH (we think sometimes the onomatopoeia helps the large boring factors of his personality along a bit) rightfully said last week:

“This is a singing competition. NOT a song-CHOOSING competition.”

Alright cheers for that, Gaz Lurhmann. This is, of course, immediately followed by the judges waltzing out onstage to their pedestal of affection to some pompous Wagnerian (no, not THAT Wagner, the other one who Hitler liked… NO, NOT THAT ONE, YOU’RE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE NOW) orchestrations, so we all learnt a valuable lesson there.

So, with the big guns out… oops, no – that’s the war again, isn’t it? Okay. With the slightly complex-inducing fighting talk statements out, the judges (apart from Louis, who was knocked out of the competition in 2003) are going all out to get their precious little cornucopias of talent all the glory and unwavering respect that absolutely none of them deserve or naturally will ever recieve! *Jazz hands*

This week the theme is Guilty Pleasures week! Blimey O’ Jo Whiley, X Factor producers – that’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it? (hey – remember The Risk? Oh, okay, we’ll just talk about something else then, no worries) Songs we enjoy but are not fundamentally regarded as legitimate songs to enjoy, d’you mean? Crivens – this is a bit naughty, isn’t it? I hope they don’t lock up whoever thought of that idea for years and years on end or anything. So – alright, it’s Guilty Pleasures week on X Factor, which is the endearment equivalent of ordering a shot at a bar named after a sex position and not sniggering. I.e. very very endearing.

Dermot dances all over the ashes of his Media and Television with Politics degree with yet another strange selection of dance-moves, which is now becoming our least favourite tradition since Talk Like a Pirate Day, or that other one with the Jesus in it. Not entirely sure who deduced that this would be the new ‘way’, in X Factor ’11. It kind of made sense when Strictly Come Dancing made John Sergeant do it, because he was an elderly ex-journalist with a deeply rooted career in politics and broadcasting and *SMIRK* DIDN’T LOOK LIKE HE’D BE VERY GOOD AT DANCING! Whereas this is just Dermot O’Leary dancing, and there’s nothing we can do to CONTROL the dancing in any way – so therefore we do not like it.

Tulisa annoyed us by having not zero, not one, but two whole arms this week. Not entirely sure which arm annoyed us more – whether it be the one with saying ‘HOW ABOUT YOU PURCHASE MY POORLY TITLED PERFUME RANGE?’ in comic sans or the one telling us to vote for a band called Little Mix to win the X Factor. God, we hate arms so much these days.

Little Mix, or ‘Little Muffins’ as Tulisa has cleverly deduced could be a more annoying version of their actual name were up first, with a bit of a shocker for you here! Not ZERO songs, not ONE song, but TWO WHOLE SONGS were performed for our delight. Two! That’s, like, well that’s quite a lot. That’s like almost as many bits of bollocks Tulisa can write on her arm at one time! God, that woman is a temple of mystery.

One of the songs in question curiously enough turns out to be ‘Baby Baby Baby Ooh’ by Justin Bieber, or something along those lines. We don’t want to Google Justin Bieber, so that’ll be fine, we assume you’re totally okay with us just saying the songs called ‘Baby Baby Baby Ooh’ despite the odds being slightly against our favour that the KKK-esque wizards (Christina Milan, apparently! RIP “QI elves!”) responsible for co-writing that song sunk to the levels of depravity to call it ‘Baby Baby Baby Ooh’. Whatever. It doesn’t matter because it’s an not-very-enjoyable piece of music. Not as not-very-enjoyable as all the other not-very-enjoyable things that are filtered into the Little Mix performance, which in a nutshell involve ‘skater dresses’, kitsch, friendship, having fun, post-modern Pipettes angst, and ruining a Supremes song by putting lots of Canadian R&B smattered all over. Why don’t they just buy a hundred copies of the Female Eunach, strip down to bodices and pour fairy liquid all over them instead? And that is why, we here at hecklerspray moonlight as professional choreographers for popular entertainment programmes in our spare time.

There is a redeeming quality to the whole debacle of course, when Kelly suggests that the One That Embodies Many Aesthetical Traits To That Of The Golden Poison Frog One from Little Mix should beatbox more, and the audience actively boo at the suggestion. The only time the X Factor audience have ever used their evil powers for a slightly funny version of evil. Most of the time it just verges on a bit of o’ piss-annoying nuisance.

Janet “I’m not really into guilty pleasures because I’m not a guilty pleasures person” was up next to perform. Shuffling right along back out of the draining tedium which is your self belief for just a second though…

As you may have recovered in your last therapy session, Janet sang MMMBop by Hanson, and forgot the words. Possibly best if we just glaze over the whole thing and show you our notes that we made at the time.. (Yep, laugh it up. We have a biro. Hahaha. Very funny. Sure you want to download that Iphone 4 update are you?)

“What, did you forget the words or something  but you’re from Ireland, so you’re amazing?” Louis asked her. Janet responded by crying with Celtic charm.

But the moment that somehow clarified everything we’ve ever held close to our lungs was the moment Gary Barlow earnestly discussed with Janet how if he’s being totally, unflinchingly honest, that song required a strong groove vocal, which unfortunately, pre-pubescent 90s’ Hanson hit MMMBop strongly requires. Ah music.

Misha B (Or SatanJudas McMeanie Harold Shipman Pants as we love to scream at her in the street) returned again with some more steadily rising self esteem, in a VT which involved Misha standing around in her room for an indeterminate amount of time pretending to listen to music. You know, like that Clockwork Orange rape that used high speed time-lapse photography! OR ERM, YEAH! X FACTOR! To be FAIR, she does have headphones and a dress with a mouth on (which is where ‘singing’ comes out of) on, so she does actually take music seriously. What a BITCH.

Misha’s performance of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was obviously very very good, because lo and behold, she’s actually GOOD AT SINGING beyond the tired Windows Movie Maker level of professional editing that led to people thinking she was a bitch in the first place. And she was pretty effing good. Maybe Prince should get a top with a mouth on and some headphones. Even the lighting and the gimp oompa loompa ghostchavs are great! The ironic sportswear is just HILARIOUS! And, altogether, the whole performance is very very fun! Okay. The song Girls Who Just Wanna Have Fun isn’t very fun, but the REST is fun! You know what we’re saying? Bullying. Bet Misha hates those. She’s still probably putting cats into microwaves though. Gary said something or other about 2012 and the performance ended, we assume she’s opening the Olympics. Good.

“I just had fun tonight.” Misha said of the performance. Well, if you want to be that black and white about it.

Up next was Marcus Bloody Collins, singing a song in a manner that plagues our hearts with indifference. Or amazement. Who knows? Maybe it could be both? Maybe it can’t be scientifically deduced? Maybe it’s Schrodinger’s Non-Descript Marcus Collins X Factor Performance?

Next up, to follow whoever the hell that guy was, was Amelia Lily. So young, and so ill-advisedly shoehorned, that she is, but here to stay – forever and ever until she almost certainly gets voted out next week. Amelia sang China In Your Hand, by T’Pau. Nuffin wrong about that, fair enough, they want her to be the awesome one – not a problem with us. Could’ve done with injecting some inflamed hysteric passion, and 80s, and suffering, and muff-strain (not sorry) into the performance, we suppose – but fair enough Amelia, you are after all, only one thousand years old.

“Pah! Nice to hear a version of T’Pau IN TUNE!” Gary chortled into the wake of nothingness of which all his statements tend to congregate towards. Of course, when Gary Barlow makes a joke – you cant expect there not to be unfleetingly dangerous consequences, such as, oh we don’t know, Carol Decker calling Gary a twat on Twitter for an amusing period of time.

Ah, the correct way to use Twitter. How we love it so. Oh, and in case you were wondering (YOU WERE, YOU JUST DIDNT REALISE UNTIL RIGHT BLOODY NOW!) how to use Twitter. Please enjoy yet another handy fucking guide.

THE CORRECT WAY TO USE TWITTER

THE INCORRECT WAY TO USE TWITTER

Here’s a sum up of the 2nd performances.

*Little Mix sing Beautiful! The one that most people do not regard as Beautiful, also sings Beautiful. Obviously, it’s very funny.

* “I am in a band and I understand all about Friendship.” Says Gary Barlow. “Which is why I exiled Robbie Williams for decades and spouted lots of shit about him to the press for years and then shoehorned him back in for extra money because I used up all the minor chords to write mature Take That songs.” he added.

*Janet Devlin sang the least juttery and staccato Red Hot Chilli Peppers song she could find and slabs layer upon layer of dross all over it. Her boyfriend totally gets it.

*“Janet you had a shitty first song” Louis does not say.

*“That is the Janet Devlin that will sell records, this is the Janet Devlin that will sell out tours.” Tulisa does say. Wait who is she talking about? Is she talking about Janis Joplin? Oh no wait, we just assumed Tulisa Contostavlos knows what a Janis Joplin is.

*Kelly Rowland can both emote, and wear a jumper. She is a survivor.

*Gary Barlow tries to start an argument. No body notices.

*Tulisa, clearly having read through too much of the Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction September dossier, tells Janet that “She is predictable, that’s just who you are.” Totz. Amaze.

In conclusion: Little Richard to Win X Factor.

THE RESULTS

Tulisa wore the economy on her neck, The Muppets and Olly Murs defied the milk of human kindness, Janet got voted out, Jessie J suddenly realised how amazing it is that she writes serious music all the time. Yeah, it really is like Sylvia Plath never gave a shit sometimes, Jessie.

Remember back in the mid noughties when everyone was all “Oh, The Royle Family is so indicative of the modern day working class, and it’s a problem that we need to address,” and “I know someone just like Denise. She’s a feckless moron as well. Terrible BO” and everything was “My Arse”?

We all can. It was a sad era for sitcoms. An era that would’ve contributed to Lucille Ball’s suicide. If she was alive still, and wanted to do go ‘Garland Style’.

Well Ralf Little, him with the really ordinary looking face, has tried to reinvigorate his career by co-writing a piece of trash called ‘The Cafe.’

Set in a coastal cafe in Weston-Super-Mare, it chronicles the nonsensical bollocks that people who frequent cafes instead of achieving things in their lives experience. Like talking to a gay who is dressed like Hellboy. Or being an unsuccessful writer. Or looking after the elderly and infirm. Or helping out your mother who is facing financial ruin because you run an eating establishment that isn’t Starbucks or Costa.

If the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders were a thing that people could actually have faith in, The Cafe would be ranking pretty high as the thing that spontaneously infects people with Kerry Katonitis (which is a fervent mix of schizophrenia, substance abuse and a terrible taste in men). At times flipping between bafflingly pointless and shamefully mediocre, you endure with it because you believe that it’ll get better; like an abusive relationship: that you can change it, raise a family together, but in actual fact, you just look forward to the advert interludes, which in this analogy, is the brief respite when he (or she; we’re all for equal opportunities at HS) is too drunk to stand up to urinate.

Admittedly we at hecklerspray may have a high expectation when it comes to every single thing in the World (which doesn’t bode well for HS: The Next Generation), but The Cafe is so lacking in anything that anyone could call ‘entertaining’, that it becomes slightly surrealistic. But still retains it’s tragic awfulness at the same time. Like an optical illusion. A really shit optical illusion.

If it isn’t a flock of doddering pensioners arguing about the difference between a Cornish Cream Tea and a Devonshire Cream Tea, then it’s the same flock of doddering pensioners asking about what flowers mean. Apparently Roses mean I Love You. And at the same time, mean a Sunderland Leapfrog may be on the cards. The Cafe is honestly like watching an omnibus of ‘Last Of The Summer Wine’, ‘Antiques Roadshow’ and ‘Celebrity Shite In The Attic’ while suffering from Locked In Syndrome.

We’d like to leave you to get on with your filthy nocturnal habits, and googlings of ‘Sunderland Leapfrog’ with what stuck with us after all is said and done: who decided that ‘debbon’ was a correct pronounciation of Devon. It’s not. It’s ridiculous. Stop it. Stop it now.

Remember that.

That might come in handy later. Or every single broadcasted moment of The X Factor for the past week. Well, not quite but it’s better safe than sorry.

Yeah, well we didn’t really want to be ‘that guy’, but The X Factor has been an bit of an absolute odious hodgepodge of horse sputum this week, hasn’t it? First and foremost we were lumbered with the responsibility of knowing that Frankie Cocozza was kicked off the show for breaking “the golden rule of X Factor”, which is something unspecified to do with sex/drugs/the producers realising that Frankie’s incredibly annoying personality traits never progressed to the desired point where an audience would love to hate him, and simply just tapered off to being mildly dicked off about him for a few good minutes instead.

Like an unpleasant bout of German measles, rather than say, CancerAids.

As X Factor producers rightly know, they can do plenty better than that, so off with Frankie, and in with an entirely irritating decision to bring back four of the contestants who they knocked back on the first show instead. That’s Jonjo Kerr, Amelia Lily, James Michael or Two Shoes (No? Us neither).

Ooh, them X Factors don’t half rile us up. WE HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE BREAK THE RULES IN GAMES.

Now, maybe we’ve been reading too much Agatha Christie here, (or maybe we’ve never read an Agatha Christie book ever because that would cut into our often reckless and tawdry lifestyles) but HMM and MMM.  Quite convenient in a way that an X Factor contestant just happened to be a mental stupid idiot and get kicked off the show, and also pretty handy that The X Factor just happened to have four ‘spares’ that they rifled off in Show 1, isn’t it?

Mmm. Pretty interesting. Mmm. They don’t fool us. Mmm. Panorama.

Wait a moment, our allegorical phone is ringing. Hello? Stephen Moffatt? You want us to be in your next series of Sherlock? That’s very nice of you Stephen Moffatt, unfortunately we’re not professional actors and that would be tremendously poor casting, but can we talk about how you ballsed up Doctor Who with gaping, irresponsible plot holes if you like. Hello? STEPHEN? HELLO?

Sorry, all this idle, immature speculation and all you wanted to do was read about the X Factor. Sorry.

The first fifteen minutes of The X Factor were awash with technical difficulties to which the Exasperated ITV1 Apologetic Voiceover Man had to apologise for countless times, as if it genuinely mattered. Nonetheless, he was so god-awful sorry about it and was literally sobbing all over a hastily spliced together XF audition montage of Janet Devlin, The Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919, and you know, the other greatest moments of The X Factor.

This week was Gaga vs Queen week. Which sounds terrible. But we’re only saying that because it does sound genuinely awful. Kelly Rowland totally wore a tuxedo which resulted in us wanting to ram a foreskin up against her furiously, in the sort of affectionate way that the Felix cat does.  Hopefully that message will get passed on.

But before we labour under the misapprehension that Amelia Lily has definitely not already been chosen since the end of the antediluvian era to come back to X Factor, (don’t try and teach your children that, we were using comedy hyperbole) we are shown the good good times of the four new contenders who get to skip 6 weeks into the live finals and it’s no biggy at all.

Unlike in 2007 when it was punishable by death penalty, such as when Diana Vickers took a week off from performing on the X Factor and was nationally ridiculed by the masses for being a massive skiving cheat and was dragged through the streets, tied to the back of a cart.

Or for you more authentic losers out there, take 2001, Pop Idol Series 1, where Rik Waller was turfed off the show for not bothering to turn up for one of the weeks. So in a way, we’ve all matured somewhat – and that is called character building.

So, who are these fab four that we, the public- the powerful, all unanimous, made up of 15 year old girls public- have to pick? Not Amelia Lily, that’s for sure.

AMELIA LILY!

Amelia has an old dad who used to sing like Paul Weller with hair like Paul Weller but strangely enough never made it, so she caked her face full of volcanic ash and Barry M lipliner and went on the telly instead, like any good daughter would who hasn’t partaken in human traficking. Everyone thought she was well good considering she was 900 years old/16 years old.

TWO SHOES!

Two Shoes are like Beyonce but actually pregnant. Also known as: AMAZING. Also, they don’t use suffixes at all, and say things like ‘totz emosh’ which means ‘totally emotional’ in gaelic.

JAMES MICHAEL!

James Michael has a boring first name and last name, but don’t let that make you think he’s boring or anything, when in actual fact we’ll have you know he’s actually gut wrenchingly offensively the worst person we’ve ever seen. Not only does he wear a hat AND is ‘submissive’, with eyes, face, and a perfectly fully working respitory system, but ON TOP OF ALL THAT – he sang the worst cover version of Ticket to Ride since The Darkness did that song ‘One Way Ticket to Hell and Back’, which okay, admittedly was a completely different song, but had the word ticket in, and is The Darkness, so in hindsight…fair enough.

JONJO KERR!

Jesus. Obviously all that palaver went on for a nice round 300 hours, and the show didn’t set off running til around THE FUTURE O’ CLOCK, or something along those lines. We exaggerate.

First up to perform was Kitty Brucknell, who unfortunately has been the product of bullying this week. Now, we don’t want to get into the whole ‘thing’, but basically that absolute slagwhore Trivial-Pursuit-Family-Edition-disgrace-of-a-bitch Misha B has been herself, and like the momentous bitch that she is and STOLEN through sheer force the Lady Gaga song that Kitty kinda wanted to sing this week. Absolutely disgraceful. Not, like, Nu Vibe being voted off the X Factor disgraceful, we mean, like, SARS disgraceful. Like, Steps Reunion Tour Disgraceful. The big leagues. Thankfully, exasperated ITV1 Apologetic Voiceover Man apologises on Misha’s behalf.

Instead, Kitty was pinned to the floor by the X Factor producers and forced at knife point to sing ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen instead. She came dressed for the occasion with the usual large metal clamps they’ve taken to fusing to the sides of her head to keep all the crazy in. But despite all the upset and chaos the week brought, we still thought Kitty was BrianMayBlogPost-mazing. The judges didn’t agree with us, but probably just because we’re immensely talented and they are tragically brain damaged. Kelly gives some pretty constructive criticism about leather horses though, so there is that.

Craig Colton said before the start of his really boring version of Paparazzi.

“I want to be unique and have my own sound.”

Nothing like Gary Barlow to pop on over and introduce some much needed falsetto tutorials into the performance to jazz up  a performance though. “Phew!” as some sort of wacky maverick of pop culture like Daffy Duck or Berlusconi might say.
THANKFULLY, Craig did another song in the E B C# A- chord progression, which really is becoming ‘his thing’.

We love it.

Apparently Craig is straight as well, singing ‘Girl’ instead of ‘Boy is mine’ despite appaz being openly being out. Huh. If only Dannii Minogue was here to point out in a passive-aggressive way. That was the same week it all came out that she was a paedophile too, but we still massively respect her judgement. Craig sang the song fine, but that’s not our issue. Our issue is moreso – Why does Craig sing constantly with candles? Because it’s bath night? But it’s not bath night anymore Craig. It’s the X Factor now, where you have to be straight, and have showers. With women.

Lol. Middle England.

This week, Little Mix gave a shit about The Risk leaving the competition. You know, like it was a massive shock. Like The Houses of Parliament wrote a thing about it and put it on a thing.

Little Mix sang ALL the Lady Gaga songs, but Misha was still the bitch for singing the one Kitty wanted. It’s pretty good actually, you know, for the X Factor. Not for the real world, or anything mind. If we had to pick between Janis Joplin or a polystyrene clad polystyrene shaped woman singing Telephone, we’d obviously, obviously… *mumbles incoherently*

Kelly then said something awesome in a suit, but we don’t listen because she’s wearing a suit. Like a vampire. Vampires are sexy, aren’t they, children? Periods are SEXY. And for more info on becoming women for the first time, Google Vampire Cunt to learn more about puberty and the pressures of growing up.

In a scene akin to when the Elephant Man cried with confusion when the blind woman touched his face, Little Mix were asked if they wanted some sort of musical individuality by Dermott O Leary. They were fine, thanks.

After a quick consultation with Greek Goddess of Awesome Kelly Rowland, it was  Janet Devlin, do you want to take massive steps backwards before we accidentally attempt to make you interesting? Yeah sure, that should be fine. Here’s some hemp. This week, Janet sang  ‘Somebody to Love’ accompanied by John Lewis. That’s a joke about how twee and boring they’ve made another song that doesn’t usually sound like this. Still, to be fair to Janet, and we really want to try and get past our own anxieties here – our honest opinion of the performance is basically that it was boring as shit and we want to kill ourselves. So, there is that. Tulisa says that being one dimensional is great, and that she has to be in the sort of mood to listen to music that is not ballsed up hiphop ie: never. Dermot tries to argue with the judges for not all saying nice things all the time. Thankfully, Exasperated ITV1 Apologetic Man apologises for Janet’s performance.

Contemporary yet vintage at the same time is the sort of thing Marcus Collins likes to do now, apparently. We’re sure you’ve heard all about it. It’s a bit like the future, except the past instead. Marcus sang ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, but with the aforementioned contemporary yet vintage twist we were going on about before. We can almost hear Mark Ronson smashing up his brass instrument collection. Weird how these specific events correlate.

Tulisa still upset that this is not RnB either. Gary informed us that we’re in the presence of a popstar, so we all hush and have a serious think about that. Louis Walsh uses the word ‘charisma’, which means ‘charismatic’, not ‘gay’, just in case the repressed masses in the wake of Craig Colton’s lies were feeling a bit over-sensitive about that one.

SKY TV advert has stolen all of Billy Crystal’s jokes but never mind.

Dermott tells a lie about how the technical difficulties were technical difficulties and then goes on to tell us about how Lady Gaga is on the show tomorrow! HER. We have heard of her off the radio 1. And as Dermott rightfully says, “She’ll probably turn up in a bath or something crazy!” – Because nothing is more crazy than a bath.

Misha said in her VT before singing Lady Gaga’s self penned ballad about the life and tribulations of Kitty Brucknell:

“This song touches a special place in Kitty Brucknell’s heart, so I fucking ripped it off.”

Oh, and she’s doing Manchester proud. Again. Not Why does everyone give a shit about if Misha is from Manchester or not? Do they really think people from Manchester vote for the X Factor? Do they really think people from Manchester have phones?

Louis post-Charlie Kaufman box set said:

“You remind me of Louis Walsh being a racist”

Kelly insincerely crossed her fingers even though everyone on Twitter knows Amelia Lily is through for about the last 40 minutes. “It was literally like having my heart ripped out,” says Amelia. Wow, that would probably be really painful. Especially for a woman of her age. (80 years old.)

Amelia sings the totally unprepared The Show Must Go On WHICH IS PROBABLY AN OBLIQUE META REFERENCE TO THE WORLD OF X FACTOR – but it also might not be. There are a lot of things a bit dodgy about the whole Amelia Lily thing, sure. The main thing being that 2 Shoes  didn’t get to come back and that was proper proper batshit bollocks and RUBBISH too. But we’ll let it slide, because we listened to Patience to Take That once, so consequently have bigger problems. But nonetheless, Amelia Lily was so good at singing, that Vlad Rowling said “Welcome freaking back.” So, now you know all about singing.

THE RESULTS

For the first time in the history of the Tudor dynasty, this review was written before the results were aired. But as if we were going to let a little thing like actual cast iron fact get in the way of talking about The X Factor. Basically, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan play a mother and daughter who don’t particular get on very well, until a magical fortune cookie changed the way they would think about themselves forever, with hilarious capers and important lessons learnt along the way.

And Kitty got voted out.

Probably.

Happy Halloween! Lots of love, The X Factor. And boy, what a massively inconvenient (or should we say SPOOKY) set of affairs the week offered up for Saturday Night’s show. These devastating (or should we say GHOULSOME!) happenings came in a threefold sequence throughout last week.

1. Kelly Rowland is for some reason angry and in America.
2. Rhythmix have got sued or something and now have had to change their name to LITTLE MIX which isn’t as funny as ‘Micheal Barrymore’s Pool Party’, ‘Team Logic’ or ‘Sophie Habibas’ but we guess it’ll have to do.
3. Some bloke left either The Risk/Nu Vibe and a man from either The Risk/Nu Vibe replaced him. Maybe. We can’t be sure, because we don’t care.

These are the stone cold FACTS, so get use to it – because we not entirely convinced we’re in Kansas anymore like we usually are obviously, but instead in the United Kingdom watching the X Factor despite any cognitive differences instead.

And the producers still had time to provide the judges with drinking glasses with X Factor logos on, which put the cultural significance of both Factor helicopters and large masses of people making the X Factor logo with their hands in massive, massive perspective.

“Be afraid Britain! It’s FRIGHT NIGHT” Peter Dickson begrudgingly informed us, with half his soul ripped out as per usual. Oh awesome, they’ve cancelled X Factor and put on Fright Night, have they? Blimey, isn’t that unlikely. We hope it’s the 3D 2011 ‘comedy remake’ with Colin Farrell, rather than the muted pallet, repressed sexuality through the medium of werewolves, 80s contextual references but-it’s-the-original-movie-so-we-HAVE-to-like-it-bullshit version!

Oh wait, it’s still the X Factor. Well that wasn’t a very accurate intro really.

“Your scary Saturday night starts right here!” Dermot lied, to an apocalyptic fanfare of werewolf howls and Wilhelm screams clogging up the atmos, like we’re in bloody… Jaws 2 or something! Terrifying. Then he had the audacity to come on stage with eight lycra clad slave-women, immersed in both ‘banter’ and ‘choreography’. But we don’t want to talk about that.

Now, before we get started – we have a bit of bad news about how our pitches to Dermot O’Leary went regarding his opening X Factor comedy gambit he likes to do at the start of every show. As a result of this – we just thought we’d do the exact same thing again this week instead. Because it’s never too late to be great.

ORIGINAL DERMOT O LEARY JOKEY HALLOWEEN X FACTOR INTRO

“Tonight is fright night. Things are going to get really spooky around here, but no-one is more frightened than our X Factor contestants!!! One more blood curdling note and they could be on their way home!”

HECKLERSPRAY’S JOKEY HALLOWEEN X FACTOR INTRO AUXILIARY

Hey guys! Tonight it is the precursor weekend to Halloween, which is actually on Monday, but obviously we could not change our viewer’s schedule because we spend a lot of money on making The X Factor. But don’t get in a Conrad Flurry about it, because tonight on the show – things are going to get pretty eerie. So you better be ready to Jeckyl and HIDE because contestants have been suffering with acute adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressive moods all week, so they’re not mentally strong enough to maintain regular social activities right now. Talk about Myra Spine Tingly! So remember – if the X Factor singers sing terribly tonight, there is absolutely zero chance that they will be going home because our audience’s are not professionally trained tonality experts and usually have impeccably awful judgement. 9/11-a-fying!

Or something to that effect. We’ll get Graham Norton’s joke-writers to gloss over it later.

So who will be replacing Kelly Rowland who is for some reason angry and in America? It’s only bloody X Factor 2008 (probably) winner Alexandra Burke! And hold up those schizophrenic handbags, cos Alexandra aint taking no shit from Tulisa way over there! (sitting directly next to her, inches away) That’s for sure! Not that Kelly is absent due to a fallout with Tulisa, and not that the X Factor would dare allude to that entirely fictional piece of information in any way to evoke interest. Oh, and Tulisa wore a catwoman outfit, just in case Anne Hathaway hadn’t extracted enough sexual charisma out of that character yet.

First up of course was The Risk. Who have had the toughest week EVER, according to Tulisa. Well, Tulisa, we hate to be picky about this –but we suspect that’s a little white lie.

Okay, so it’s a BIT RISKY, but pah! You know what the risky Risk are like with all of their sex and their jackets and god knows what else. With only 2 days of rehearsals with their new band member Azerbaijan, or whatever his name is – The Risk somehow manage to hold it together for never performed since 1984, Micheal Jackson forgotten gem THRILLER. A terrifying song to be singing first on the X Factor, ESP after the Halloween edition of Strictly Come Dancing too.

Come on, this isn’t very funny guys. You should know really, after such a tough week. We’re not laughing. The backing dancers even look petrifying, exclusively wearing produce from the Lindsay Lohan Leggings Company. Eerie enough for you?? No? Well, they also turn a song originally termed as ‘disco funk’ to ‘cool’, so maybe you should take that to the Hate Bank, eh, HATERS. Even Alexandra Burke agrees they have a ‘little something something’, which is an amazing point amazingly made, but we can’t help wonder what Kelly Rowland would have said. Probably something different.

Dermot used a Frankenstein joke and correctly differentiated between Professor Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, because this is top quality Saturday Night Entertainment programme.

Next up was definite prodigal son of the next 30 years of pop music and all round Pina Colada fan Johnny Robinson. “Here’s Johnny!” Johnny exclaimed excitedly in his VT. We have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. “That’s from The Shining.” Johnny later explained. Oh. Shut up Johnny.

Johnny defies all forces of music/gravity/atheism by singing in clothes designed with cotton and with a human man in mind, as opposed to Astronaut Porn Dungeon Keepers – as is the norm, and sang Ole Devil Called Love from ‘the past’, with nothing but candles, and a piano and a Brian Friedman restraining order. He’s finally done it guys. He’s finally out-masculinated a non-descript but altogether very feminine woman.  Amazing. Amazing to the extent that Gary Barlow surgically removed Simon Cowell’s arse-clamps and lumbered on stage as fast as his legs (which have been cursed and made of stone) can carry him to give Johnny the loving caress of a man Johnny had read about in so many Truman Capote novellas over the years. It was mesmerizing and a bit like the best moment on TV ever, had this not happened first. But it did, and we have to fill in the Kelly Rowland cocaine quota somehow. Tulisa patronised Johnny MASSIVELY calling him a ‘little bit sexy’,  whereas Alexandra went for the more medically accurate analysis of Johnny – discussing sincerely that “You sung your little heart out.”

Sophie “Check out the upcoming syllables” Habibas (Yeah Peter Dickson, whatever.) was up next to perform, but not before taking us back to her hometown in Islington, LANDAN where she used to be a LANDAN barmaid in LANDAN. But enough of that now. That’s all in the past, and now she is singing Nancy Sinatra with an up-bun. You can literally cut the tension with one of Jamie Oliver’s down to earth cockney knives, as she sang the song with a grotesquely LANDAN accent. Yknow. Because Kate Nash did it 4 years ago, and it was really endearing.

Everyone told Sophie she was rubbish, but only because of the absence of KELLY ROWLAND, ergo, the only woman in the United States of America who could possibly have brought out the best in Sophie, obviously. Alas the best we have is Alexandra Burke, Via Kelly Rowland, Via Derek Acorah at the moment, who simply tells Sophie that she has the ‘ability to shine’, presumably because you automatically lose 60% of ‘sass’ when you try and transport it from beyond the afterlife. Sorry. We’ve completely lost our minds.

Next to sing was Marcus Collins, who we still kind of don’t care about remotely for some reason. Probably because we’re terrible. Marcus sings Superstitious, except with an INXS bassline, cos he is the ‘musical one’ of the group. Every specifically music-based reality TV show needs one after all. It sounds relatively fine, mostly because we have heard of both Stevie Wonder and INXS. The choreography however could’ve used a little bit more of Tara Palmer Tomkinson doing the lyrics to Penny Lane in sign language though if we’re all being incredibly honest with ourselves. But maybe that’s just us. The judges are still for some reason trying to convince us that Marcus is straight, with Tulisa basically handing Marcus over the Nobel Peace Prize for daring to wear a bit of make-up during his performance (Reminder: This is a Halloween themed edition of The X Factor) “The last time I saw a certifiably hetrosexual man wear make-up he got stoned to death right outside my doorstep because we were terrified it might be one of those dangerous queers.” Tulisa thinks but does not say.

Last week, Tulisa was an absolute absurd excuse for a human and stirred large vats of shit and lies about Misha B, seasoned with Gary Barlow’s lucidity and Hugh Laurie’s marital happiness. This week, Mischa was sure to put those rumours to rest, by explaining to us, the sympathetic British public, that she once got lost in a field but it’s all part of growing up or something. We weren’t really listening. But Constantly Disregarded X Factor Voice Coach Man was, so that’s okay. Nonetheless, Misha is BACK to show dem bitches what for in a Say No to Racism t-shirt, despite not having the musical inspiration of Kelly Rowland, who is the only black singer in the world. Mischa sings a Tainted Love MASH-UP because she frickin LOVES Freelance Hellraiser it when The X Factor producers make her do that every single week. This is to do with the fact that when you put more music on top of other bits of music’ it sounds really cool. Also, for some reason she was wearing a massive wooly phallus on her head, and also a hood, which was also really good and logical and cool. And you’ll figure all that out one day too when you get YOUR Cosmopolitan Blog Award. Everybody loved Misha, even though she’s a certified callous bitch. Louis Walsh did a ghastly Kelly Rowland impression. Alexandra Burke shrugged.

The SPOOKINESS continued with Janet Devlin, who just for Saturday night, sang in the key of Halloween! That’s out of tune, by the way. Also, you can tick ‘Crimped hair’ off the never ending list of Bella Swan-tastic things to do before you die, if you like. Louis Walsh did his god awful Kelly Rowland impression again. FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Oh WHAT. You know how they did that first really big war and then they did that second considerably bigger world war with MORE of the world in it? Well following Janet was of course Frankie Cocozza. FRANKIE COCOZZA. Eurgh. ARGH. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Oh my god we’ve got a brilliant idea. Let’s not write about him. Okay. Brilliant. Cosmopolitan Blog Award 2012 here we come.

So that’s the calm before the storm, the eye of the storm, and then the SHITSTORM covered. Now on to the Storm Lee portion of the programme, with Kitty Brucknell. Oh Kitty. People forgot to like her again despite all the child abuse and glaucoma and whatever else it is she’s been injecting for the past week, and Kitty found herself in the bottom 2 – which she obviously talked about in a deeply morose way for a bit. God, CHEERS GBP for that. We could have chopped down some of Frankie Coccozza’s ill deserved self esteem, but no. We’ll just hack away at the mental complex-ridden pensioner instead. Kitty sang Sweet Dreams Are Made of These And Always Sung on the X Factor, and it was very good. She did that thing at the end where she puts her arm in the sky and then the music goes OOMPH, because she is constantly Hercules. (Disney version, not actual. That would be sparsely inaccurate.)

Absolutely Any Combination of Words Will Do As Long As You Don’t Actually Say Their Actual Band Name were up next. Or Little Mix if we HAVE TO. SEO is Best-io.  Anyway. This week was almost as devastatingly awful and 9/11-y as Tulisa’s other group Nu Vibe or The Risk we honestly can’t remember. Anyway, Little Mix had a terrible terrible week because one of their band members was SO ugly they got sued by a charity. We’re joking, we’re joking… We understand how hard it must be to be emotionally stoned to death by the internet, even though we ARE the internet. So we’ll try and cover this as sensitively as possible. The Ocelot One from Little Mix had been having a bad time of this week, due to insults and diatribes through ‘Twitter’ and ‘Websites’. We think this is absolutely wrong, and we totally TOTALLY get low self esteem issues, we DO. But Roy Walker always told us to say what we saw, so it’s a bit of a Catch 22 really.

Nonetheless – ‘Little Mix’ (*Tightens leather buckle*) did a lovely job of singing ET by Katy Perry. So whatever we may have said in the past about The Animals of Farthing Wood Faced one from Little Mix, just know that feminism will always be there to combat us in the end.

Last to perform is CRAIG COLTON, who sang Set Fire to the Rain whilst wearing a massive duffle coat, so we refuse to write anymore because Craig has insulted our intelligence.

THE RESULTS!

A few things.

1. Cher Lloyd turned up and sang what simply must be THE NO.1 SUMMER ANTHEM OF 2011. In late October.
2. Nicole Sherzinger has to make pop music using sad synth now, and it’s all Lewis Hamilton’s fault.
3. We have seen the OK.com joke, and are now letting it pass over, to join Bruce Willis in Heaven.
4. Tara Palmer Tomkinson on Comic Relief does Fame Academy is absolutely the best thing about tonight’s X Factor by a clear country mile. LOOK AT THE STATE OF THIS SHIT. Bloody hell. Just say no THANK YOU Mr Drug Dealer, I’ll stop at 7 E’s, ta.
5. Alexandra Burke’s jutting head is the worst pilate class ever.
6. Alexandra Burke is still amazing.
7. Kelly literally phoned in sick so she could vote off Sophie (Oh yeah, Sophie went. Cosmopolitan Blog Award.) and sounded exactly like dishonesty and Bryan Cranston’s lung cancer acting.
8. Mischa sang “Catharsis (I didn’t say nuffink)” by Kings of Leon, and we all forgave her for being a bitch.
9. Cher Lloyd hasn’t slept in years.
10. Justin Hawkins thought the show was terrible.

Can we go to sleep now?

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Hey guys. The X Factor’s still on. But that’s totally cool because the 100 Year War ran over a couple of decades too, and that was just as important, so not to worry. Those House of the Plantagenet dudes probably had issues connecting their own personal stresses in life to Lighthouse Family lyrics too. Oh, life.

But as Virginia Woolf once said, “When Frankie Cocozza had those girl’s names cauterized into his sigmoid colon, he was probably just a bit tipsy.”

The theme for this week was of course LOVE AND HARMONY. So, in celebration of that, we’re going to get off our ivory towers, and ride our high horses back down to Planet Earth and be nice about The X Factor for a change. Because All You Need is Love, as The Beatles once said, which is true. But they also said “We all live in a yellow submarine”, which isn’t technically accurate, and that “Happiness is a warm gun”, when in fact – quite hilariously – happiness is actually an abstract concept brought on by endogenous opioid peptides that adopt temporary feelings of exhilaration! Haha! God, those guys and their heroin, eh?

But nonetheless, The X Factor carried on regardless, but ONLY BECAUSE it is an amazingly brave television programme and coincidentally just happens to be really really cool and brilliant and mind blowing and resplendent and amazing.

But yep – the theme was love, as Dermot O’Leary may or may not have told us because we’re only 14% convinced he’s actually still in the country, let alone hosting The X Factor. Oh come on, we’re only joking. Of course Dermot still hosts The X Factor, and we think he’s doing a marvellous job. We only said that because X Factor is such a touchstone of televisual entertainment that we sometimes get so swept away in the mayhem – the show’s BRILLIANCE almost hosts itself! So, that’s all we meant.

First to sing on Saturday was of course everyone’s favourite Hi-NRG synth masterminds of hope and promise for a new generation Nu Vibe – who rather delightfully sang a U2 song fused with some wavetable synthesis and some added electro basslines! Now, SOME would say that this was a bit of a risqué musical decision, but not us – whom of course loved every second of the cripplingly corrupt and insincere performance of the five wife-beating dictators. Sorry, we always had trouble spelling the word ‘brilliant’. Oh, Nu Vibe. You are so funny and blokey and adorable together. We bet sometimes you push your intense heterosexuality to the core and order a ‘slippery nipple’ shot from a bar just for a laugh because you’re just a bunch of down to earth guys really. Onwards and upwards!

Oh our god! Imagine if the day after Christmas they had a day called Christmas 2! Yeah, that’s right. Following in the canyon-sized footprints of magnificence of Nu Vibe was Sami Brookes, who sang I Will Always Love You – which is of course not only the greatest song in the world, but also championing 4^th position in Woman’s Own’s Top 10 Songs To Have a Bath too. And as for Sami? WELL. Her fringe looked really, really great. We’re not even bullshitting here. It glimmered like the tears of a newborn child.

“You picked a massive song, and you have a massive voice but you are definitely not clinically obese and I would never allude to that in any possible way.” Tulisa Einstein-Newton-Archimedes conferred after Sami’s really incredibly unpredictable performance.

Craig Colton was up next as you obviously remember because you guys are amazing. He sang that boring Beyonce song about ‘feelings’ which is fine, except us normal human beings over in Planet Sanity are all just listening to the Beyonce songs about how HER ARSE IS AMAZING AND SHE BOUNCES IT ALL OVER THE WORLD LIKE A REALLY AWESOME AMAZING VERSION OF MALARIA. Alas, Craig does not share the same musical aspirations as we do, which is a shame. In a way.

The Aurora Beurolis Janet Devlin (ie: The OTHER Queen of Our Hearts) had a hard time of it this week. Yeah, we know we’ve called her a bint… and an AIDS hoarder… and a happiness vacuum in the past, but that was just childish horseplay. Janet explained in her VT that her granddad died this week and just to tug at our already tattered heartstrings further, ITV cruelly told us the tale complete with our most despised of enemies – DESPONDENT PIANO.

Don’t you hate it when really old people die of natural causes? We literally can’t think of a time that has ever actually happened to an old person before, so Janet is tremendously unlucky. Nonetheless – she muddled through with her version of  “I can’t help falling in love with you” which apparently is a song. The lyrics sounded like a coke-addled young scamp fervently scrawling down Spandau Ballet’s back catalogue on the back of a pub quiz sheet, but whatever, it’s obviously beautiful and amazing and Janet’s so different and innovative from all those other try-hards who mistake having split ends for musical accomplishments. So beautiful and amazing it was, that in a moment of sheer COCAINE brilliance, Gary called Janet – and we’re not even shitting you – “A great translator of music.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Which of course we agree with and think is an amazing point amazingly made obviously.

From one great translator of music to another – no no, NOT “Elvis Presley or Little Richard or Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon or James Brown or Joni Mitchell or Aretha Franklin or someone along those lines”, MORONS – we are of course talking about Sade Frankie Cocozza! who came back this week due to unfortunate lack of manslaughter.

But joking aside, this had actually been a tough week for Frankie. Holy coping mechanisms, Batman! If you thought things were bad for Janet this week we literally couldn’t believe our ears were physically attached to the side of our own heads and always have been when we heard about Frankie’s gripes and tribulations the week previous had brought him.

Singing a song, and then not singing that song and then singing a Coldplay song.

Ignoring the fact that Rihanna once used the term ‘Dope Coldplay Track’ – then this is obviously not a very nice thing that happened. We mean, JESUS Gary, Somme much? Cut the guy some slack, he’s only ever felt the warmth of a woman’s touch six times, his heart aches with loneliness. Thankfully for Frankie, he is a really god-awful excuse for a singer, so his version of The Scientist went down amazingly well with literally every one. Don’t you just love a happy ending? At the end of the performance, Gary tried to make a joke that Frankie should have sang I Will Always Love You, Louis and nobody laughed or made any fragment of noise for over 40 minutes. Just incredibly cystitis-y and awkward for everyone. Good.

Johnny Robinson sang I Can’t Get You Out of My Head in a Geisha outfit which wasn’t clinically misjudged or humiliating in the slightest, moreso, the singular best thing we saw on Saturday the 15^th of October 2011 by a MILE. Unfortunately, Gary had to ruin the totz amazing atmos of the performance by chastising Johnny for looking EXACTLY like Aladdin. Hmm. Aladdin, eh. A-la-ddin. Okay, that’s fine. He probably knew what he was talking about.

Next up was of course LIVERPOOL from Liverpool. Liverpool told us all about how being on the X Factor is a lot different to being from Liverpool, but still a good laugh regardless of all the lack of Liverpool by talking to some people who are not from Liverpool. Liverpool then sang Russian Roulette presumably because he is a massive fan of both The Deerhunter, the short lived 2003 ITV1 daytime quiz show with Rhona Cameron, and mid-tempo R&B ballads in F Sharp Minor. Liverpool seemed proper into it, and the judges were all like ‘Why are you looking at us? Do we look remotely musically qualified to judge you people in the slightest? We just really really like morphine to be honest.’ We were going to tell you more about this, but then the big thing with the sjiodijsofdjdfohfd happened and it was really boring and we didn’t want to.

After the break, we’re sure you all remember listening to Rhythamix/Rhythmix/Weetabix/The Remix to Ignition Hot and Fresh out the Kitchen out-funk the FUNK out of Nelly Furtardo’s I’m Like A Bird, which is a song about loving someone so much that you literally feel like a BIRD, but thankfully – cheers to hip hop, the Fresh Prince of Bel-air, black nationalism and all of that sort of thing it is our utmost honour to inform you that the girls managed to sing the song beautifully and well without beating the ugly one to death and chewing on her eight mouths.

Misha “What a lovely décolletage!” Bryan came dressed as EVERYONE’S FAVOURITE QUALITY STREET LOL! Misha, what are you like, with all this talent and hair and vast selection of synthetic polymers! Misha has come a long way from riding an Arriva bus to her hometown of HOLE IN THE GROUND OF LIFE every day back and forth picking up shards of nacre from the rubble of her broken home JUST so she can eat her non-fertilized sturgeon roe properly. We love her. Well, you know. We love her in the sort of way Woody Allen loved adult women.

The Risk showed us plenty of risk with their risky interpretation of that Bruno Mars song – the risk being that the song is SO brilliant, could they overwhelm the audience with happiness TOO MUCH? As it turned out, they didn’t at all. Bit upsetting.

And last and by every single means least if we’re talking about scale of cognitive mental disorders was Kitty Brucknell. This week in ITV1′s attempt to stopper Kitty’s cognitive development’s any further, Kitty received warm praise from the one and only BLOG OF BRIAN MAY! Blimey. There we are. The Blog of Brian May. That sounds really all kinds of levels of interesting, doesn’t it? Well, we guess all that HTML from 1998 had to go somewhere. Brian May’s official Blog…  God, if only there was some sort of way of finding out our top five favourite sentences from Brian May’s official Blog…

THE OFFICIAL HECKLERSPRAY GUIDE TO THE TOP FIVE SENTENCES OF BRIAN MAY’S OFFICIAL BLOG!

1. “I was doing E-mails at the time, but my ears pricked up when a young lad sang a song incredibly passionately”

2.  ”I have been quite quiet on the subject of the Badgers recently. I’m sorry.”

3.  ”I will be on the sofa on Friday on the ONE SHOW – introducing a short film we have made on Cows, Bovine TB, and Badgers”

4. Mel C WILL rock you!

5. “Who knows where these huge lumps of machinery will land?! NASA evidently don’t! Fabulous.”

Sorry.. What were we saying?

THE RESULTS

Nu Vibe, despite having an ENTIRELY NEW VIBE were regretfully sent home. Boy, what an intense cesspit of intensity and intense feelings it was. Alongside Nu Vibe in the firing line was The New Germaine Greer Frankie Cocozza, if you could believe such a thing. Frankie and Nu Vibe! WHO WILL KEEP ALL THE SEX IN THE UNIVERSE SAFE NOW? As you can imagine, the sing-off between the two was a physically AND emotionally challenging experience, which is something we all hate. Just ask Taylor Lautner. He found out the hard way.

Yes, the sing off was so greatly filled with anguish, angst and Angus Deaton that Frankie even veto’d singing in favour of developing small amounts of semen at irregular intervals instead. Not a problem Frankie, you carry on. It’s safe, and perfectly natural. Unless of course there’s even a whisper of an outer labia within a five metre radius, in which case use a condom. So, with a heavy heart it was a bawling rohypnol-popping Tulisa that lost one of her acts, but it’s okay Tulisa, because we’re all dying anyway.

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Before we begin, we just want to say one thing. We’re sorry.  No, listen. WE’RE sorry. Remember how you watched The X Factor for 2 and a half hours on Saturday? Well we’re going to tell you about that in quite an unnecessary amount of detail now.

And what’s more, you’re going to like it. Yeah, in a sexually testing sort of way. Yep. Yeah, you’re going to feel vulnerable and alone afterwards. No, we don’t do cuddles, that’s how people get attached. You kind of knew what you got yourself into when you turned on ITV1 on the 20th of August 2011.

Or when you then subsequently googled ‘Kelly Rowland’, followed by ‘The point of anything in the universe at all’ with mild curiosity. So, in a way – you deserve what is about to happen to you.

So this is it – the first X Factor live show. The first of 12. That’s 12 weeks. That’s three months. Do you know what you can achieve in three months? Well, yeah you COULD obtain a basic level motorcycle license, and sure, you COULD learn how to make your own yeast, and sure, MAYBE, your unborn foetal self could develop fingerprints.

But what actually is going to happen, is that you are going to spend quite an inordinate amount of time gunning for a wistful pale girl called Janet Devlin who sings about her hair. Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s do this properly…

WOW THE X FACTOR! Look here! Black and white slo-mo shots of our potential Bowies, Springfields, Franklins and Cardles making their way up to their first auditions, where we first got to hear their raw, cutting, and totally unedited talent in it’s unhoned gestation period. Like, literally looking at baby tadpoles, if baby tadpoles sang Adele covers and then weeped uncontrollably at their own brilliance.

Actually, that sounds like the framework for a Cadbury’s viral video at some point. ESCAPE KEY. ESCAPE KEY.

So, who’d have thought it? The X Factor survived the departure of Simon Cowell and became THE NEXT GENERATION! YEAH! LIKE STAR TREK OR THE RUGRATS ‘ALL GROWN UP’ AND STUFF. THE FUTURE. THE BETTER, MORE IMPROVED FUTURE. Even Scott Mills was excited about it, and you know how much of a serene beacon of broadcasting he usually is.

“There’s only one goal. To find a Superstar.” Says Sincerity Barlow, but then unbeknownst to him, ITV1 cut to one of the rubbish auditionees singing rubbish straight after this – which is really, really funny because that’s a juxtaposition of two abstract concepts.

“LIVE FROM LONDON!”  Peter Dickson squawked against a tracking shot of London in case we dared not to believe. Dermot O’Leary legged it out on to the stage looking sickeningly excited, and tells us that the theme this week is ‘US vs UK’ Ah! A tongue in cheek reference to the notably more financially viable and successful US X Factor there. Aha! Very classy and very clever. Cool. We get that. X Factor ½, right? Professional post-structuralist theoriests the world over must be absolutely creaming themselves chuckling at that one, because we know we are.

Oh our respective GODS. In replacement of the standard Simon Cowell salute of 2010, Tulisa engaged in a fucking Gladiators fist pump. Kelly Rowland attempted to compensate with jazz hands, but in all frankness it was so-so, BUT she is wearing the front cover of a special edition Goosebumps book as a dress, so props to her man. Props.

But first thing’s bloody first. You’ve all been dry humping the backlog of Digitalspy forums all week to find out. The big twist. That big, bloody twist. What could it be? What could the big twist that we all found out about last Thursday be?

Dermot exclusively revealed with all his pervasive acumen of a QI researcher that the big, big twist was that there was no public vote this weekend, the judges are effing-off truckloads of the contestants instead (or ‘four’ for the more mathematically minded of you out there). Be still, our aching myogenic muscular organs!

Gary explained to Derm that the reason for doing this was because there’s oh so much pressure on the contestants. True. So much fame, and expectations and ITV1 lighting fixtures. All those highly medically taxing things. But never mind that right now, because at the moment we’re going to pretend we don’t know anything about it but then tell you at the end, because we are like the Christopher Nolan you never had.

First up was Amelia Lily, who now has pink hair. Do we smell ROCK STARDOM? Oh no, no, that’s just our loins burning. She sang a vaguely heavier composition of Billy Jean if you can imagine such a thing, and then if the sweat from our collars couldn’t glue to our neck hairs any tighter, she only went and wore a leather jacket AND a denim skirt! The judges were a bit like ‘meh avril lavigne bleurgh not even legal yet bleurgh meh bleh’ but Amelia wasn’t at all arsed. Good.

“Here’s Johnny!” said Louis as he announced his first act. We assumed he was quoting the more innocuous Johnny Carson style “Here’s Johnny” rather than the Shining’s “Here’s Johnny” because we’re sure Louis would never liken any of his acts to terrifying myers from Kubrickian psychological horror of course. Oh no wait, it’s Johnny Robinson, we hereby retract all of the above.

Hey guys, question. What do you do with someone when they sound like autotune BEFORE the autotune? Cake them in bacofoil and masquerade them as a ‘diva’ we suppose. Okay, here’s another question. What do you do when someone sounds like autotune when they’re incredibly weak and riddled with osteogenesis imperfecta? Do EXACTLY the same thing, just with larger sunglasses to cover the crevices a bit more. Johnny sang Believe by Cher, obviously, and look, it was just amazing. What do you want us to say? The man is 502 years old and we’re honest. Tulisa called Johnny her ‘guilty pleasure’ and everyone elses. AU CONTRAIRE Tulisa – we have nothing but sincere respect for Johnny’s italo-disco musical aspirations. Guilty pleasure. Pfft.

This guy is Kraftwerk reborn, and Gary Barlow agreed with us, as he told Johnny with all the precision and seriousness of Ghandi that he is seriously disappointed in Johnny; in particular the embarassing lack of UNKLE samples and the mostly misjudged 1/16 paced sequencer rhythm. Johnny waved this all off with a sexually repressed limp wrist and a “OohbettyI’mfree” to the delight of pretty much the universe.

Gary on the other hand was still gravely concerned about the lack of musical integrity Johnny is displaying. To be fair though, Gary is gravely EVERYTHING. Louis tells Gary to listen to the public because they LOVE him. Yeah Gary, listen to the mentally unstable shivering humans surrounding you that are so grateful they managed to break into the building without being shot, that they’re rogering themselves to death with their own self-made oxygen masks out of sheer excitement. Just listen to them, Gary – because they know.

But Gary persevered, telling Johnny he looked ‘cheap’. ‘It costs a lot to look this cheap, Gary!’ Johnny hit back with lightning fast comic precision. Don’t you just love unscripted live TV?

And then an ad-break came and totally widdled one out on our chips by telling us that ITV have given Jeremy Kyle a QUIZ SHOW. It’ll probably have questions like: “For a hundred pounds – what the hell are you doing with your life and why are you even bothering trying to contribute to the failing human race by trying to have sex with this lovely innocent drug dealer?”

After this awful revelation, the mostly (and by mostly we mean entirely) pointless group category were next to take to the stage. Taking out the EURGH out of Eurythamics – introducing RHYTHMIX! They sang… wait… we should say rap AND sing! It was all urban and amazing and we really couldn’t care less. It was fine, but evidently not going to wash on a programme where we much preferred a dying eunach coked off his mind on lo-fi and foil rather than this lot, no?

Regardless, Tulisa – with all the power of her legs and opinions and misjudged bleach gave them the first standing ovation of the show. No fair. Louis would have probably done the same if he hadn’t swapped his leg muscles for Westlife in a drunken bet made decades previous. In a moment of pure, unadulterated clarity Gary called them ‘the best girlband that have ever been on the X Factor’ which is a truly amazing achievement in his cruel girlband-less, world.

Regrettably, next up was Frankie Cocozza, who hadn’t so much as had his terrible chauvinistic personality shaped as he had his eyebrows. Frankie explicated in his introductory VT that his life is already changing so much. “There’s girls screaming outside, there’s girls asking for my autograph…” girls agreeing to consent without calling the police… It’s all going on for Frankie as he got up on stage. It’s kind of good that he did in a way, because we always did wonder what would happen if there was such thing as a midget John Cooper Clarke impersonator, and if it would be a good or bad thing.

We now know.

Then came Sophie Habibas, or Sophie ‘HER NAME SOUNDS A BIT LIKE ‘HER BOOBIES’ as Peter Dickson delighted in bellowing. Sophie sang brill cuz she’s brill, so that’s that. Louis figured out she was singing a PIANO-LED KATY PERRY COVER about three quarters into the performance, and wrote down some fake notes about how brilliant that is. Can we at some point try and get a copy of Louis’ notepad by any chance, because is it not just a star quality/YOU LOOK EXACTLY LIKE MARIAH CAREY/you belong on that stage Venn diagram?

Following directly on from that last statement was Jonjo Kerr, who is a soldier who impregnates his wife when he’s bored, ie: ALL THE TIME. Imagine being the world’s most boring person in the world, and THEN being bored.

Jonjo covered You Really Got Me by the Kinks while showing us what the worst thing we have ever seen in the world looks like. And we’ve seen a cat eating it’s own premature born kitten. It even had a misjudged camera zoom at the end, and Jonjo squatting in a suit. If you don’t believe us, here’s the link to Jonjo’s groundbreaking performance.

“IT WAS NOT MY IDEA.” Louis screamed over and over as the performance came chugging to a halt. “I’m guessing the girls in hot shorts weren’t your idea as well” quipped Gary, because homosexuality is wrong.  Jonjo (who is a professional warrior) retaliated with something boring and blokey and then went back to the war where he can shoot someone in the face in the most boring way imaginable.

Mercifully, ‘totz amaze’ Two Shoes came to save our tedium, allowing us to yell ARGH, ONE OF THEM IS PREGNANT AND WE DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE, WE’RE TERRIBLE PEOPLE! And oh, Two Shoes. You were so amazing in your eccentric pink car and effeminate songs from Veet adverts. All the judges are dancing, except for Gary who was watching it from a serious singer-songwriter’s point of view, as per.  Tulisa and her roots chastised Gary for this, and told him that he was WRONG and that Two Shoes are AMAZING because Essex is SO CURRENT right now. That’s true actually. The only way IS Essex…

‘Two shoes or NOT Two Shoes? That is the question!” queries Dermot, except that it is not a question, because shoes isn’t a verb which would take the subjunctive out of the original quote’s context so that wouldn’t really necessitate the correct sentence structure to…well, we don’t really want to get into that right now.

Next up was something gut wrenchingly terrible, and his name was Vervey Spiv McRinglets. Oh, okay killjoys – his actual name was *Mumbles something incoherent about Google and 404 errors* Anyway, the facts are – he appeared to be a human man, or something to that effect, so don’t tell us we don’t do our research. In his VT, he bursts into tears on a 834 seperate (But all totally permissable, obv) occasions due to the fact that his family are stupid and have misjudged issues with real estate.  So all in all, a terrible human being. His hair looks like Ben Stiller’s ejaculate hanging from his ear, which is probably a cool post-ironic Topman trend that we must have missed because we were too busy being happy that day.

He sang The Carpenters’ version of Ticket to Ride on the set of Oliver Twist in a three piece suit and it was the funniest thing we had ever seen for about five minutes until it got incredibly awful and psychologically arduous of course.

And to think that this guy gave up public school to play the guitar. We’re really glad he did – because that E minor chord is sounding spot on, mate. You know what? Sod all the other ones, just play that one consistently throughout the entire performance, LOVE that chord. Sounds all sad and thoughtful and such.

And you know what else? Less IS more. Less music that is. WE LOVE MUSIC. Oh no wait, sorry. We’ve just mistaken this for music. This is just an audio rip of a snake shedding it’s skin over a 72 hour period. Just a pile of ponce. We bet his boots smell of Urban Outfitters perfume.

Misha Bryan was next, equipped with an Adele song. You know what, bring that. Bring fuckloads of Adele covers, all dolled up in a dress made of newspapers! Remember, Misha’s too poor to afford real clothes. Fabric ? MAVERICK more like. She sang a remix of Rolling in the Deep and ‘cool things’ because she is cool. It’s totz awesome obviously. But so is the sound of rotting sand after James’ performance.

Then came Nu Vibe – (yes, Samuel Johnston. Phonetic spelling! Imagine!) who all hate each other with intense lustful agony. They sang via the Matrix because they’re all massive fans possibly, except for the one on the far left who thought the sequels narrative structures were a bit convoluted if he’s being honest.

They sing one of those songs you hear on ‘Radio 1’ and it’s cool and dewy and…and existant…and ABREAST. It’s all of those things, and more besides. Mmm-hmm. Yeah. One of them shows off their saucy abdomen at the end. Lovely culturally relevant abdomen. The clarkgablemoustache one (See, this is why JLS had an accessible colour co-ordinated system, guys) says that this is the stuff that dreams are made of. Aw, that’s quite touching, actually. Not to be a dick or anything, but FYI, dreams are actually made from emotions and sensations generated during the REM state of the unconscious brain muscles, so technically dreams are made of neurotransmitters, serotonin and histamines rather than say, appearing on The X Factor in a jacket. Technically.

We were then treated to Marcus Collins. Boy, where do we start on Marcus Collins? After all that Marcus Collins-y based hoo-ha has been swimming around the ether for the past 200 years. God, we love Marcus Collins so bloody much and have absolutely no idea who he is.

“One minute you’re a hairdresser from Liverpool, the next you’re being scrutinized by the press.” Gary philos in Marcus’ VT. Ah, that old chestnut. But who cares because Sammi Brooks, the one of eyebrows and misjudged turbans is back!

She’s not supposed to be here, but because Goldie had a dense eccentric fit, she here she is, to absolutely everyone’s joy and merriment. Hopefully she’ll fill in the rest of the post-disco eras that Johnny didn’t have the bone marrow to muster. Oh, that she did! Look at her go in her sparkly tunic and leggings, the little minx! Coleen Nolan must be clawing her TV down to the core with desire, hammering key words into Debenhams online.

Tulisa then promptly went about telling Sammi that she is quintessentially (okay, she doesn’t say ‘quintessentially’, the residents of Camden would have her stoned again) ‘the voice’ of the competition, and then treads down a slippery slope of trying to comment on Sammi without saying ‘YOU’RE FAT AND OLD’. She goes with ‘You represent…’strong’ women.’ Good one. Gary tells Sammi how friggin’ incredible she is and how she’s exactly like Mary Byrne without all the emotional problems and children. And so she should, because for every great soul singer, there should be a sparkly bolero. Sammi has earnt hers. And just quickly, let’s just write this down…

Gary says to Sammi – ‘If you’re not here next week, I am leaving this chair.’ Right, let’s see him get out of that one. Set in WORDPRESS DRAFT STONE, that one, Gar’.

Then Risk happened. Well. Didn’t happen. BORING. Craig Colton then waddled on-stage, and he’d picked his own song because he’s really into anarcho-primitivism just really likes this song. To rapturous applause, Tulisa took a pop at him for ‘hiding behind all the comedy’. What comedy? That’s not comedy Tulisa, that’s mild obesity. Not a laughing matter at all.

Anyway.

You know how you’re all wasting away and your stress levels have reached weird levels to the point your hallucinating various floating pieces of medieval torture devices and your doctor’s a bit iffy about the whole situation? Hi there Kitty Brucknell.

So, sometimes things sound great on paper, and sometimes people just turn up on the X Factor dressed in all the remnants of the Foot and Mouth disaster (RIP The Moocows of 2001) and scream incoherently about immortality for a few minutes or so. Kelly was concerned for Kitty due to the fact she was shaking during her performance. Kelly, the woman is clearly quad-polar, 80 times over and sucks the milk loafs in Sainsburys in the vein hope of extracting alcohol from them, of course she was shaking.

And last of all (YEAH I KNOW, WE’RE SO HAPPY TOO! No, don’t cuddle.) is Janet Divbin. Janet has red hair now, because red haired people are endearing. No not Nicole Kidman, she’s a natural blonde. No, not Christina Hendricks either. No, not Lindsay Lohan, we said ENDEARING redheads. Anyway, whatever. Shut up, because Janet is sad. She is sad because she doesn’t get time to play her guitar in a house full of people and just wants to be alone and wear paisley and walk on lots and lots of pebbles, but she just CAN’T, because she’s so famous and successful and some idiot called Janet Devlin put all her videos up on the world’s most globally recognised video sharing website and everyone just loves her  to such stupid degress and it’s NOT FAIR IN THE SLIGHTEST.

Janet warbled Chicken Huntin’ Slaughterhouse Mix by Insane Clown Posse some wet by Coldplay and it’s just a real testament to Janet that she can make a song that is already of the highest proportion of Twee to new levels of quaint dainty balls. It sucks arse, in other words. And then Tulisa, Gary, Kelly and Louis had the audacity to tell Janet how amazing she is even though all she wants is to be alone in a desert eating cucumbers making origami swans.

But then Kelly says “As you’ve gone through the competition I’ve watched you come into yourself.” Oh, well, erm, *tugs allegorical collar* Well, just carry on Janet, carry on.

THE RESULTS

Oh yeah, one last thing. Guess who totally got shunted off the show last night?

Only bloody Jonjo, 2 Shoes, Amelia Lily and the dickhead who ruined music forever! We know, right? On the results show, absolutely bupkis happened.

Even Matt Cardle turned up halfway through, as some sort of sick, sick joke. CeeLo Green couldn’t even be bothered to sew lycra to his face and sing Kung Fu Fighting, but still – that was an hour of our time that we spent not having sex with absolutely anybody that we are obviously ruthlessly trying to get back now.

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