X Factor’s Grace Davies has already been talent-scouted by Simon Cowell’s company… we all know she’s this year’s winner-in-waiting
FOLLOWING week one’s granny-crushing and beheading scenes, laugh-a-minute BBC1 drama Gunpowder tickled the nation with some good old-fashioned heretic-burning and torture on Saturday night.
A session on the Tower of London rack, to be precise, which proceeded with a “Wuuurgh” and a “WAAAAAARGH,” and a lot of saliva.
While over on ITV?
Much the same thing, to be honest with you.
It was the first live X Factor of the series, featuring almost everyone who’d been at Judges’ Houses, apart from Simon Cowell, 58, who’s “had a fall”.
The official joke from the other judges seemed to be that “he was pushed”, but I’m actually far more willing to believe he jumped in order to avoid watching Dermot O’Leary trying to get his head around the new rules.
What they’d like you to believe here, though, is that it’s “all change”.
They’ve got rid of deadlock, the judges’ vote, that fishy jukebox contraption and all the other things that made it look like a massive fix, and replaced them with a VIP trip to New York competition.
“HOORAY!”
That you can’t win.
“Oh.”
Instead, for the pleasure of giving them another 35p, you can send the weekend’s best performer off on an all-expenses-paid jolly to Madison Square Garden, to see a Pink gig.
An idea that, in terms of exploiting the viewers and ruining all tension for the remainder of the series, really does take some beating.
If you were expecting the singing and entertainment to make up for this kick in the teeth, though, now is probably the time to take a seat.
It’s not happening.
With the possible exception of Tracy Leanne and Mustafa, who looks like he won his own competition to be in Rak-Su, they weeded out all the comedy at the auditions.
Fun then, was never likely to be on the agenda this year.
CHEZ SUPERFAN Find out who's Cheryl's favourite act of this year's series
What I did expect to be able to do, however, was recognise most of the songs.
A couple, in fairness, were familiar on Sunday. I drew a total blank with all of them, though, the night before.
It’s tempting, obviously, to put that down to age, as some of these lively little sods weren’t even born when I started this column.
But then the second-last performer, “warehouse worker” Grace Davies, appeared.
It was announced she was “doing one of her own songs”, and the scales fell from my cynical old eyes.
That’s Grace Davies who was first talent-scouted by Cowell’s company SyCo in 2014, has already performed at showcase events sponsored by Sony Music and is very much being groomed as this year’s winner-in-waiting.
So nothing and no song was going to be allowed to upstage her.
‘Cos however much it assures us it’s changed, and that it’s a “competition”, The X Factor is, above all else, a marketing exercise which has no role for the viewer beyond handing over their money.
As ruthlessly, of course, as it champions some acts — it wants a Grace v Rak-Su final — the show dispatches others, like VIP airport-greeter Talia, who was done zero favours by the lousy production and sent on her way with the minimum of fuss or sincerity by Dermot.
“I hope you do something with this and go on, in some shape or form, and sing for a living.”
Yeah, right. Window or an aisle seat, Simon?
- MOST beautifully timed advert of the week arrived 15 minutes into Ball & Boe: Back Together, courtesy of Dr Dawn Harper: “Replens. Clinically proven to relieve vaginal irritation.” And what if you’ve got two of them?
Caring TV? Fat chance
A HUMAN archipelago landed in the Bahamas last week, hitting the sand like the Royal Tank Regiment on D-Day.
The point of the exercise being The 18-30 Stone Holiday, which was an ITV show that could fairly be described as a “have your cake and eat it” documentary.
On the surface, it was full of tears and concern for the show’s eight unhappy guests, who were repeatedly described as “plus size”, in much the same way as we lost a great singer last week, Plus Size Domino.
Yet it swiftly became clear the Eleuthera resort, where they’d reinforced all the sun-loungers and beds, had “spotted a gap in the market for obese holidaymakers” and employed a pastry chef working triple shifts to ensure “the market” stayed that way.
On a slightly pedantic note, the title didn’t stack up either.
Steven, “who’s from the town of Fife” (It’s a region, blockheads), weighed in at 37st and Alice was 36st.
If anyone was still labouring under the misapprehension ITV’s motives were honourable, though, the killer detail was the advert breaks, which were filled with plugs for Tesco’s chocolate tart, Burger King and “nine chicken nuggets for £1.99”, thereby ensuring the whole miserable cycle continued indefinitely.
Still, as long as a half a dozen over-sharing Twitter goons claimed it “made me cry” that’s all that matters these days, I gather.
SILENCE OF THE MANS...
SCENES, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, on BBC1, Sunday night.
All of them, of course, provided by the Blue Planet II team and Sir David Attenborough, who, at the age of 91, can still bewitch and surprise us with a bird-eating fish.
That’s an actual fish, called the giant trevally, which can leap 15ft out of the water, like Tom frickin’ Daley, swallow a tern and leave nothing but a few feathers.
There was also a very modern BBC parable in the shape of the Asian sheepshead wrasse, or kobudai fish, which, fed up with advances from the hideous lantern-jawed male variety, vanished into a shipwreck for a “bit of me time” and produced this remarkable Attenborough commentary: “As time passes the female head expands and her chin gets longer. She turns into a he and with it comes a change in temperament.”
At which point, I promise you, there wasn’t a husband in Britain who dared breathe, let alone talk.
- NOTE: If you missed The Blue Planet II’s transgender Asian fish, you can see it on the BBC iPlayer, or just wait until it enters the Celebrity Big Brother house in January.
— GREAT Sporting Insights. Anthony Joshua: “Even in London I’m not living in luxuria.”
Rob Hawthorne: “From 2-0 down to 3-2 up, this could be the start of a West Ham recovery.”
And Dean Saunders, from the 1990s: “He’s the quickest man in the world but Linford Christie couldn’t play up front for United.” (Compiled by Graham Wray).
— SOME understandably blank looks on The Apprentice’s brilliant corporate hospitality task, as “Bushra’s football facts” talk kicked off with the question: “Does anyone know Geoff Hurst?”
Not a name I’ve ever come across, personally.
However, after consulting close friends, I’m very reliably informed this Hurst character scored football’s first ever two-goal hat-trick in a discredited 1966 forerunner to the proper World Cup.
It meant the tournament was declared null and void until it was properly won 3-2 in 1967 by Scotland, who very graciously declined to defend the trophy in 1970, but regained it four years later when they were the only unbeaten side at the 1974 tournament.
And please ignore fake news outlets, like talkSport’s Hawksbee & Jacobs, who might dispute this version of events.
These are NOT “lies,” they’re alternative facts.
AMAN-DUH HOLDEN
INTERVIEW of the week was, of course, supplied by This Morning’s bewilderingly dim holiday cover Amanda Holden, talking to astronaut Major Tim Peake.
“When you went to the moon, did you take a piece of the moon and bring it back with you?”
“I wasn’t on the moon, I was on the space station.”
With the recommendation being, they talk a bit slower at production meetings, or Amanda’s in for the disappointment of her life when she interviews Bruno Mars.
— RANDOM TV irritations: EastEnders having its seventh anti-Brexit dig of the year.
Strictly Come Dancing dressing Jonnie Peacock up as the wrong pirate.
The Last Leg hypocrites devoting just 85 excuse-mongering seconds to Labour Party pox Jared O’Mara, who’d have got the whole show thrown at him if he was a Tory MP.
Paul Merton continually undermining anyone else who gets a laugh on Have I Got News For You.
And ITV’s Ball & Boe venturing the question: “Hasn’t it been a great sequel to our one-off special?”
Only if you compare it to the plague returning to Madagascar. And even then . . .
— QUIZ show bone-domes of the week. Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Bedford is the county town of which English county?”
Gary: “Hertfordshire.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Soccer manager Terry Venables got his nickname El Tel when he moved to what country?”
Elisha: “England.”
Ben Shephard: “In what European country is the House of Orange-Nassau the presiding monarchy?”
Jackie: “USA.”
And Ben Shephard: “Which time of day completes the title of Frank Sinatra’s 1966 album Strangers In The...”
Frazier: “Air.”
— SKY planner’s trailer of the week? TLC, My Giant Genitals: “A growth on Forence Owiti’s genitals has swollen his testicles to the size of bagpipes. Can doctor’s successfully operate?”
And if they can’t, can they teach him how to play The Skye Boat Song?
— INCIDENTALLY, I’m not against the token quota presence every week on Have I Got News For You.
So long as the BBC ditches the woman who’s absolutely ruining Tracey Breaks The News.
LOOKALIKES
THIS week’s £69 winner is The Blue Planet II’s transgender Asian sheepshead wrasse (kobudai fish) and The Rev Ian Paisley.
Emailed in by John Nisbet.
Picture research: Alfie Snelling.