Christmas Number One

This should have gone up yesterday, but my BlogPress app decided to publish the last entry three times instead. Ain't technology wonderful?

So it's happened. The 25 second wait is over, and the winner of X-Factor 2009 has been revealed. Who is it who has captured this nation's tremulous hearts over the last oh-Christ-is-it-really-that-many weeks, who has taken us on the teacup ride of their emotions with them, the dizzying highs and terrifying lows? Erm...

Turns out it's some guy from South Shields. This isn't to denigrate South Shields, a fine part of the North East, itself a fine region, sort of out of the way and very much of itself, like Seattle or Perth. I like it a great deal. But I really don't think it's worth taking the time to learn Joe McElderry's name too carefully.

The X-Factor has something of a mixed reputation for generating lasting success after all. As did Pop Idol before it. Yes, Will Young, yes, Leona Lewis and yes, Alexandra Burke (for now). But for every winner, there's a Steve Brookstein, there's a Michelle McManus and there's a... well, exactly. I can't remember that guy who won it that one time, and neither can anyone else. A stopped clock is right twice a day, but it hasn't been Chico Time for a good while now.

Really the only winners are the judges. Controversial opinion, eh? Doesn't stop it being true, though. Emma and I watched the announcement LIVE last night, and after Dermot O'Leary had finished pausing we saw the look of utter bewilderment on Joe's face as he learned that he'd been chosen out of 250,000 people to be chewed up and spat out by Simon Cowell's entertainment sausage machine. The analogy with The Jungle is, I think, apposite. Upton Sinclair would have had a field day with the X-Factor.

First, look at the human face. Last night, as Joe Thingy swam his way through the gloopy ballad that has been already picked out as this proud nation's Xman Number One single, we could see four distinct takes on events. Joe's mentor, the ever-warm Cheryl Cole, was beside herself with pride. She'd been there herself, a lifetime ago, before she became the country's sweetheart by losing a lot of weight and marrying a footballer. Well, she's so warm. We can all relate to her, if we ignore the massive wealth, army of stylists and batallion of publicists is takes to make her look so effortlessly natural. In contrast was Dannii Minogue, a woman so outrageously jealous of the younger, prettier and just overall better woman beside her, and so cripplingly embittered by her much more famous sister's successes and her own lack thereof that the botox really does struggle to cover it all up. After all, she can't even pluck a success out of this glorified fucking karaoke contest. What does that say about her? Huh? She will surely die alone as her sister bitch of a sister dances on her unmarked pauper's grave. You can see it in her eyes. The pain, the pain.

Also suffering was Louis Walsh, a man who cannot believe it has come to this. He looks bored, bewildered and just plain angry. Once upon a time , he was Ireland's answer to Brian Epstein, Phil Spector and Berry Gordy, but that was a long time ago. Now, just to survive, he's reduced to this. His face speaks of pride, passion, and constant, endless failure. He's mad, madder than Hell! But he's got to take it, again and again, and again. Because there's that man. The one we all love to hate. Oh, his comedy trousers, oh his comedy hair. Look at him stood with his arm round our Cheryl. But also, look at him as he struggles to hide the boner he's getting from the thought of all the money he's going to get from Joe's milk-white crooning, on top of all the other money he's going to be getting from Susan Boyle's exploits (before it all gets too much and she's institutionalised and he can forget all about her). Look at him and the glint in his eye. Simon Cowell.

Simon Cowell. We'll get to him in a moment. But in the meantime, consider the things you don't see. Like the 25,000 people who turned up at the NEC or Docklands Arena or the SECC to take their chance of a lick of that shiny brass ring called showbusiness. They had to go through several stages of auditions long before they got to see a judge, in front of TV company people insetad, just so they couldweed out the average and leave enough decent people to spin out 13 weeks of tortuous televised singalongs(and Swing Week, when they can all pretend to be Robbie Williams, I mean, pretend to be Frank Sinatra) plus a fair number of deluded mentalists who can be happily mocked in front of a TV audience for believing they could ever compete with The Machine. Which brings me neatly back to Simon Phillip Cowell.

Simon Cowell, Britain's 11th richest man, a self-made man who follows his own rules, but preferably no rules at all. A man unencumbered by conscience, if his treatment of Eoghan Quigg is anything to go by. After all, what 16 year old needs GCSEs if he's going to be famous? No 16 year old, that's who. School isn't cool. Signing your life away in a ten year contract you haven't read, by contrast, really, really is. Simon Cowell, a man who was visibly counting the minutes he has left to remain in the UK before the Inland Revenue can ask him for any money so he can go back into the comfort of tax exile in Mustique. Simon Cowell, a man who sees the world less as a planet and more as a series of demographic tables, with detailed statistcal analysis of our incomes, liabilities and music buying habits. Had he been alive in the 1800's, I'm pretty sure he'd have bagged enough lions, tigers and miscellaneous natives to populate Exeter. Simon Cowell, a man who fills his life with fast cars, lingerie models and silly ranch style houses in California to fill the black, beating, sucking void in the centre of his chest where his soul used to be...

Simon Cowell. It's easy to see why he generates such opprobium from modern, relevant artists such as Sting and Jay Kay. His output is beige, his attitude is smarm and hubris is his middle name. What is there to like? Not much. I don't even think he does much for charidee. But then again, even after all this, I don't hate him. Myself, I don't hate any of them, except Dannii Minogue, who really is the face of truest evil. And really, I think Sting saying as he did today that this show is putting back music decades, is a bit rich coming from a man who was last considered innovative in 1981.

But I am not keen on the impact all this is going to have on this year's winner. He's 18. He won't have a clue. He certainly won't understand all the things he's going to have to sign over the next few days, and he most definately won't realise that the £1,000,000 record deal he's getting out of all this means that he doesn't just owe Cowell his career and a go on Christmas Top of the Pops, but also a million pounds. This is how the system works.

Maybe Rage Against The Machine will be the festive number one after all. I remember hearing Bruno Brookes accidentally play the entire mix of that, way back in 1991. We drove across Dartmoor to the sound of Zac La Rocha yelling "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" as Bruno rang his stockbroker about those Thames Water shares and the world shifted beneath his feet. Cowell had already shunted Sinitta out into the world by then. The die was pretty much cast, even all those years ago.

Sigh. It's all so dismal, and there's really very little to be done about it. On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. But then, W C Fields would never have made it past the preliminary audition anyway.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Doug