Good weekend, was it? Had some enjoyable sandwich fillings and simulated some erogenous zones, did you? Yeah. Yeah. Us neither.
Never mind, because The X Factor was on too, and if that wasn?t amazing enough it was a 2 hour special Judges Houses special as part of a special exclusive double X Factor weekend special. Which is pretty, amazingly special when you think about it.
But, that's the X Factor for you. Always fulfilling our dreams, always making Pinnochio look lacklustre. So what was in store? As if you didn't know. As if you didn't Sky Plus it at your X Factor party with custom made flags. Actually, that sounds like a pretty wild night, you probably do need reminding. All those Pringle cans to clean up and all that psychological torment. We?ll sort you out. Come here. It'll stop bleeding eventually, we promise.
So, just to quickly sum up ? 320,332 people applied for the X Factor and 293,023 people got through to Boot Camp. So that leaves us with approximately the entire population of Austria in the Judges Houses stage of the competition. The world has never seemed smaller. Kelly?s mentoring the girls, Tulisa?s got the groups, Gary?s got the boys, and Louis? got the terminally ill mentals. All in all, things seem pretty straight forward so far. But Jesus, guys, stop dwelling on the past ? that's how you got into this situation of watching The X Factor and THEN reading an X Factor blog about The X Factor in the first place.
Peter Dickson informed us that the X Factor has gone ?global?, which is true, because yes ? the X Factor has gone to America where it is infinitely going to be more successful, cheers for reminding us Peter. Come to think of it, isn’t Peter Dickson just making an entire mockery of The X Factor in a sort of modernist pastiche kind of way anyway? A man who makes stinking wads of cash by having a stupid voice, whilst ex-contestants do UK Tours of the nations Shakeaways? Blimey. That’s going to take a hell of a lot of Antonioni films to help us fully understand the scope of that one.
Anyway, Tulisa ?firmly told her girls that ?NO ONE IS HERE TO LOOK CUTE? – cue the camera cutting to a thousand girls wearing braces with accordians sellotaped to their gussets. It was always going to be an emotional. We mean, Gary Barlow?s going to take ?risks? for god’s sake. How often does?that ever happen? Oh, and Louis is going to cry again.
It was funny the first time, but now it's just kind of awkward to watch.
All the contestants were so darned excited about being able to go on an actual plane to an actual country, because they're all poor and starving to death for the sake of their talent. One of the contestants (who we don't know the name of, because we didn't want to) actually shared to the camera her fears of ?not being able to get on the plane?, she's so emotionally incapacitated by the state of her musical aspirations. Can you imagine THAT much sentiment on one plane? No WONDER Ryanair announced plans to temporarily cut capacity by grounding 80 aircraft in the winter schedules between November 2011 and April 2012 due to the high cost of fuel and continuing weak economic conditions! RIGHT GUYS? Oh, they're travelling by Virgin Atlantic. Well, there goes all our laughter.
The judges met their new prospective?new definitions of music in LA, Barcelona, Miami and Greece, which is lovely for us to watch and lovely for Olly Murs, who's probably been gagging to check out the Parthenon ever since he watched the Malayalam version of Alexander the Great last year, which we heard he just adored. Meanwhile, Gary Barlow standing on a ledge in LA is the most uncomfortable thing we've ever seen.
Firstly, we met with Tulisa and the definitelygoingtowinthisyear group category. Tulisa is ?so excited to get her hands on the final four?. Christ, our EARS, Tulisa. We can't all be as sexually experimental and all knowledgable about hip hop and leather like you. Tulisa?s all important celebrity helper is for some reason Jessie J, who has a broken leg, in case you didn't get the NASA report about that 400 years ago. Jessie apparently used to be in a group, so it's totally relevant for her to be there and she has a fringe and a Brit award so she must know what she's on about.
Either way, this is going to be a much better combination of musical minds than that time Dannii Minogue and Natalie Imbruglia were teamed up to see who could sing Damien Rice with the most sincerity.
It kicked off to a flying start with Jessie J informing the groups with every ounce of Morgan Freeman?s prefrontal cortex that the best thing for the groups will be is if ?they all pull together.? Oh god, that's actually really good advice. Imagine if they all sung together at the same time as well. That?d be like some sort of mental thing Sigourney Weaver would have to flame thrower the shit out of, make no mistake. And we're not the only ones, as one of the members of one of the groups (that's as accurate as we can get, sorry) sighs that she is ?literally in awe? of Jessie, which we can totally relate too because we too thought it was pretty phenomenally staggering that Jessie saved the entire ruptured state of the economy by writing Price Tag. Isn't it nice when you can relate to people?
Next up was Miami, where we got to pretend that we were hanging out with Kelly Rowland. Kelly’s celebrity guest was Academy Award winning incredibly successful human being Jennifer Hudson. ITV1 do their bit for equality by immediately cutting to Misha, the only black finalist of the category, for her reaction, because black people like to see other black people. True, Jennifer Hudson is quite a good celebrity guest judge, but she still never supported Cyndi Lauper?s 2008 ?Bring Ya to the Brink? tour at any point, so overall we're still not impressed.
Then we joined Louis in Barcelona (oh god, if only) to take a look at the mental old contestants. Louis says that ?he probably has the most hopeful category of the year?, which is true. Not talented, mind. Just?hopeful. Speaking of hope, look! There's Carolynne from Fame Academy 2, who says she is here to ?work?. Well, that was very nice of the ITV1 camera crew to film some of the opinions of the bar staff in that case. Moving on from all the mass hilarity, we are introduced to Louis? celebrity expert? Sinitta.
Okay, you can carry on laughing now. What the hell was she doing there? Has Louis not checked under all of the seats of the Westlife tour bus or something? Nonetheless, Sinitta is there. Being Sinitta, once again. Quite possibly the 2004 British Comedy Award-winning X Factor?s most unfunny inside joke. The tears of joy and LITERAL AND NOT FIGURATIVE AWE of the youngster categories are put into harsh perspective with Louis? category awkwardly clapping and Terry reasoning that he didn't expect her to be a bit fit, as if the man wasn?t clutching enough straws in his life already.
Finally, we got to be with Gary and the boys in LA. Gary goes on about the fact he got dropped from his record label once and had to come to LA to ?find himself?/find anyone on Planet Earth who hadn?t seen?this and of course his celebrity friend is Robbie Williams. And yes, he was wearing a comedy palm tree outfit, and yes, he did explain why he was wearing a comedy palm tree outfit, which obviously made it even funnier. God, it was funny when he did that. God, it's funny when Robbie Williams gets naked, like that time he did it for Comic Relief once and how that was funny also, and also for charity which just made us all feel really great whilst we were laughing too.
Hey, isn't it weird how Robbie has battled depression and self esteem issues for most of his adult life and probably uses his nude body as a comedic shell to hide from his brutalised view of his inner self? Still though. Palm leaves. LOOL!
For a laugh, the auditionees then began to actually sing for their mentors. Because they're not on holiday, they're here to have a horrible time in three quarter length trousers. Here is a rundown of their auditions and just how horribly awkward it really was.
THE GROUPS
The Vesty Divs The Keys ? Sang one of the really boring Beyonce songs that nobody gave two hoots about at Glastonbury. You know, the one where she didn’t shake any part of her body. Terrible.?And yeah, we know she's withchild now and that would ultimately be an awful thing to do, but still. Can she really give us bootylicious and then take away said bootylicious? Just like that? Really? Well, maybe we?ll just take away her first born child and make it listen to loads of Tori Amos, see how she likes it. What were we talking about?
The Estrelles ? Rubbish name that doesn't make any sense. If you want to sound ?exotic?, call yourselves Las Ketchup. Also ? bad at singing songs. Obviously, not a major issue ? but just thought we?d mention.
We Forgot to Write Down Their Name but Essentially Two Crying People ? ?Hey there! Did you accidently turn up on The X Factor and sing a Kings of Leon song? Did Jessie J absolutely rip the shit out of you once you were done? Never fear! Next time just paralyze yourself on gin and tonics and rip your clothes off and fall off a table, and all your dignity will come flooding gently back. That's a hecklerspray promise.
The Lovettes ? The Wedon'treallyfindwecanemotionallyattachifwe'rebeinghonest-ettes MORE LIKE.
The Risk ? There's quite a funny bit where one of the guys says how he just completely doesn't want to be in the group and thinks he's better than the others. Come on, you know us too well to know we don't paraphrase, don't you? Oh, sorry, we didn't mention their singing. Well, they sing No Air. There. Now you’re crying and can’t open your paracetamol lids. That’s what you get.
Two Shoes ? Apparently Two Shoes are ?not just a pair of Essex girls here for the crack?. Based on this, we want them to win. They?re actually really good and we would love to give them some crack.
Nu Vibe ? Oh look at us, we have penises and we sing songs written by people with vaginas instead. Novel. Voltaire never thought of THAT ONE, did he?
Rhythmix ? Isn't this a type of biscuit that one of The Apprentice teams made up once?
GIRLS
Amelia Lily ? Kindathoughtthiswasgoodsowhatever.
Jade Richards ? Yeah yeah. Vowel splitting and being in the sub consciousness of Kelly Rowland is probably exactly how David Bowie did things at the start too, but this was rubbish. That's right Jade, you don't fool us. You're probably secretly happy and everything. You probably go home and do happy eyebrows and watch porn and feel really good about yourself.
Sophie Habibis ? YES, Sophie Habibis. With your impossible last name and your sex organs. We like you.
HER NAME MIGHT BE SARAH ? BUT QUITE FRANKLY WE FORGOT ? Boring.
Melanie McCabe ? Nice bun, but ultimately boring.
Holly Repton ? Jesus, how many of them were there? Well done Holly, you bored us too.
Misha Bryan ? AKA OLIVER TWIST ? Poor Misha. She's never even eaten a Marks and Spencers ready meal, let alone been on a plane with two floors before. We bet she's never even looked at a lobster. Someone give this poor woman a fucking fiver so she can buy a rag to sleep in at night or something.
Janet Devlin ? ?I love not wearing shoes. It makes me feel more grounded.? You know what makes us feel more grounded? Trench foot.
THE MENTALS
Johnny Robinson ? If Johnny Robinson took Viagra, they?d instate a national law to surgically remove every woman?s ovaries.
Natalie Cassidy Sami Brookes ? Sorry Alicia Keys, someone just made your song even less interesting, if you can imagine.
Terry Winstanley ? Old man got older.
Carolynne Goode ? Blah blah blah vocal chords blah blah blah.
Some Guy ? Yeah, he sang Bruno Mars. I think we're done here.
GOLD-AMAZING-IE ? Amazing.
Jonjo ? Oh god. THIS GUY. Never has a man been more deserving of the name ?Jonjo.? Has his wife had her boring baby that won't amount to anything yet?
Kitty Brucknell ? Ha. Mental diseases. They?re so funny. Kitty says some sort of botched line from Notting Hill and then jumps in a pool. When is Louis going to stop mistaking borderline personality disorder for charisma?
THE BOYS
Frankie Cocozza ? Skinny jeans? BUT THEY ARE FOR GIRLS, FRANKIE! HAVE YOU GONE MENTAL? Long hair? BUT THEY ARE FOR GIRLS FRANKIE! YOU ARE TRULY AMAZING. God, we hope you get through and screw everybody until they're bone dry.
John Wilding – When we have a weird face, we like to compensate with even weirder hair too.
Joe Cox – Olly Murs just called. We didn't answer, because we just didn't feel like chatting with Olly Murs. Ever.
James Michael ? Poor POOR creative and amazing James Michael literally cannot sing without a guitar because he plays guitar. You need to know this. James Michael has the ability to play the guitar.
Max Vickers ? ?He sings like his mum has just told him to turn his X Box off.? Says Robbie Williams, who once released some albums, so we?ll assume in some sort of mental universe that makes a scrap of sense and just go with that.
Luke Lucas ? A boy with the ability to buy green headphones and bad at singing songs. Give us some of that DNA NOW.
And that, our emotionally disturbed friends is that. Tomorrow, find out who got through in our EXCLUSIVE REVEAL THAT YOU DON?T KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL BECAUSE SHUT UP YOU DON’T KNOW.
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