Right. RIGHT. So, the X Factor is still on.
Here are the opening titles. Here?s Dermot O Leary?s voice hurriedly aired in from Skype. It's time to face the music. No, not time to face the music and dance. You are mistaken. Just time to face the music.? Just maintain eye contact with the music until you start feeling uncomfortable and?embarrassed?and just want to go home.
Look, there’s an X Factor helicopter.?Okay, so let’s talk about X Factor helicopters.
X Factor helicopters. Here at Hecklerspray, we absolutely arse-rape X Factor helicopters. ??There is literally no object in the universe that carries quite as much purpose as an X Factor branded helicopter gliding merrily over an open field system to an indeterminate location. X Factor helicopters. Just a really good idea.
Now, although the X Factor has always been achingly spontaneous and a bit like The Lady from Shanghai but with more Kelly Clarkson covers, it is still important to maintain the televisual rules of basic continuity, so we are treated to a conglomeration of young people with hairstyles and shirts and skin informing us that they will literally commit actual suicide if they don't win the X Factor in the next five minutes because the prospect of not-winning makes them genuinely physically ill.
One young woman professes that when she thinks about not being a singer, her heart beats really fast, which is actually quite lovely and inspirational. Or Type 2 Diabetes.
Most Successful Person To Come Out of Manchester From Cheshire Gary Barlow has now regretfully downgraded his upbringing as simply being from the slightly more ambiguous ?North West? so he can champion the talent of Liverpool in this episode instead. God, it’s like Sophie’s Choice, but instead of a gassed rejected child, it’s a Merseytravel rail card.
So, as this is a double bill X Factor weekend ? some pretty fucking special juju is most certainly going to go forth, wouldn't you say? You couldn't be more utterly right if you tried. It's Tulisa?s birthday. How do we know? Because we care. Louis Walsh told us on an escalator.
Queue a whole massive chunk of quality TV about how Tulisa celebrated a birthday about three months ago, which is the most deserved celebration of someone?s life on television since ?Living Lohan?. This sequence of Tulisa pretending to be happy goes on for about twenty years, which coincidently is the same amount of time it takes for Asbestos to?embed into the typical human lung, which are obviously two radically different incidents, but still probably worth pointing out.
This is getting a little bit silly now. Let's try a bit of reverse psychology. CAN WE HAVE SOME SINGING NOW PLEASE?
No we may not, apparently. What is available however is the brand new changing room segment of the show ? where (we assume) contestants stand in a room holding up hair straighteners, and shoe boots and tampons and for some reason ? dancing. Just constant, terrifying, disheartening dancing. It's a really upsetting thing to try and put into words. How can we put this? We know. Did you ever see that documentary about that heroin addict whose veins were eventually rendered useless to the point he had to start injecting it into his groin? No? Oh. Okay. Have you ever seen Glee? Right. It's exactly like Glee.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, it's the first contestant of the show. His name is INEVITABLY Marcus Collins. Marcus coyly divulges to us that he has toned down his hair to a more ?relaxed colour? for his audition today, which interestingly enough is much closer to his natural shade anyway. He goes into this matter in further detail, but it's a pretty sensitive topic to discuss so we don't really know if we should speak about it so openly. How best to describe it? Right, did you ever see that docu-
Okay, never mind.
Marcus gets up on stage, and selfishly talks about his life aspirations and dreams for a whole 9 SECONDS before remembering to wish Tulisa a happy birthday. Marcus creates a Twitter parallel universe by uttering the not so immortal words: ?I'd rather walk into Marks and Spencers than walk past it?, if ?we know what he means?. We don't ? because that isn't on any level a popular idiom to slip into conversation in front of 8 million people, let alone poor old Marks and Spencerally challenged Louis Walsh, who stares morosely into the distance, secretly wondering if his off-pink shirt has made any sort of an impact on anybody he's bumped into that day.
Marcus sings Signed Sealed Delivered, I'm Yours ? by Lee Ryan. This is presumably the obnoxious Stevie Wonder cover that everyone tried to ignore. Marcus sings the song with a jaunty spring in his step and at no point does he try and throw the microphone into his other hand and then back into his previous hand and then return the microphone to the original hand to the rhythm of the bass line, which is something that happened on the X Factor once, and it wasn?t very good. Marcus gets through. Kelly Rowland says ?Marks and Spencers?. We cuddle our own knees.
The editors put their 2005 British Comedy Award to good use in a small segment where a man is forced to strip naked and serve drinks to Tulisa and the judges, whilst Tulisa makes inappropriate comments about how she'd like to spend ?an hour in her room with him?. Louis giggles, because he suspects Tulisa may be alluding to violent, clammy mutual masturbation.
A man in a wanky hat is up next. He is unemployed, he is called James Micheal, and seems to be trying to give off the impression that he is a real, verified human being regardless. James sings the Adele version of Make me Feel My Love OBVIOUSLY. And when we say ?sings the Adele version?, I mean properly ties his testicles in a Windsor knot and hits every nuance and modulation that you could ever hope to hit to achieve faux-emotion in a song you lyrically probably don't give much of a shit about. (Come on ? ?I could hold you for a MILLION years?? That's AGES.) Nonetheless, James gets through.
It's time for the Dermot O Leary wearing a navy blue turtle neck section of the program, which isn't everyone's particular FAVOURITE bit, granted ? but eventually everyone kind of grows to love it, like when Demi Moore and Bruce Willis had that daughter with the chin that looked like a root vegetable, but kept her anyway.
As is customary with the Dermot O Leary Navy Blue Turtle Neck portion ? the next contestant is a middle aged man who ?goes to the gym? and has aspirations despite a little thing called LIFE trying to diffuse them on a day to day basis. His name is Graham Bennett, although the catheter hanging out of the ankle of his jean clearly says ?Paul Weller?, so we're not trusting anybody. He has the voice of a man who should be deep in conversation with Suggs in a Wetherspoons about how he once voiced a badger on a CBeebies ident.
Sorry, what? Graham professes that the only reason he is auditioning for X Factor is so that he can get off with Sandra Bullock. This is the greatest excuse for auditioning X Factor in the world. He better be good. He better be bloody good, so he can attend to the broken heart of Sandra Bullock as quickly as is fucking possible. Like THAT?S not been looming over our heads on every waking minute of the day. Shit. He isn't very good. How can one woman endure so much pain?
Turtleneck Hour on the X Factor drags on slowly and bitterly on as A Woman From Dublin performs a song not to the best of her abilities. Louis Walsh makes a big deal about saying no to her, despite HIM BEING FROM DUBLIN HIMSELF! Loveable scouser from Take That Gary Barlow makes the exact same joke. This is followed by a man who wants to be a pop star not being granted the wish of being a pop star, and a black woman not singing exactly the same as Beyonce despite ALL THE ODDS. Meanwhile, Charles Darwin shrugs.
The next segment is Sunday night television at it's most droll (Unlike Saturday night television which will never quite be able to scrub off the whole ?Don't Scare the Hare? thing) – as every single X Factor contestant spontaneously loses their confidence and can't sing properly, one after the other in perfect chronological order. Jesus, fucking Disney ? isn't this incredibly unlucky? This low self esteem bonanza drags on about as long as talking to someone subtly alluding to the fact they have low self esteem.
Ie: ALL OF THE YEARS IN EXISTENCE. The dramatic crescendo of this section is brought to you by ?Jonjo Kerr? (Which is pretty much the exact phonetic spelling of how Hecklerspray writers project feelings of lust on to the opposite sex) Jonjo is an Infantry soldier (IMPORTANT JOBS ARE IMPORTANT) and has successfully inseminated his wife with a child much to the gormless delight of Kelly, who is increasingly striking us as the sort of person who?d joyfully contract dementia if she ever got hold of the ?Woohoo? feature on any Sims PC game.
Quick run-through of the really boring event that happens next: Jonjo sings a Rod Stewart song, and messes it up. The judges remind Jonjo that he is a soldier and has a?foetus?developing?in his wife, so obviously has to sing well, because if the past 3 years of horrific Mariah Carey cover singles are anything to go by ? the X Factor really love soldiers, presumably because they are big and strong and good at fighting lots. JUST like Frank Sinatra.
So, Jonjo sings the song again, sings it exactly as terribly as the first time, and gets through because he is a soldier and has a foetus developing in his wife. The whole point of ending on Jonjo of course is to display the Aesop-esque moral that sometimes people get nervous, and that's totally okay. But you won't get through to the second stage of X Factor unless you've had a certain degree of lead pumped into your internal organs at some point.
And with that, we close on the final contestant, Amelia Lily. Let's just wind things up really swiftly, because there is nothing more to say about Amelia other than the following three things.
- It's just Pixie Lott, isn't it. What's the point in attempting to make a joke. She's a girl that looks like Pixie Lott, and is going to get rewarded for this.
- Her name sounds like a character that would talk to a badger on a CBeebies Ident.
- If you missed Amelia?s audition and have simultaneously forgotten what rock music is: Hopefully this handy video will kill two birds with one stone.
Next week is another double bill. we're not even fucking joking.
PS: Hey – did anyone see Antony Costa’s brother audition on Xtra Factor the other week? No, us neither. But still… ?what a horrifically discouraging piece of information.
Mollyfog says
Many lolz – but Louis is from Mayo.
Just sayin!
Laura Vickers says
” Just constant, terrifying, disheartening dancing. It