How will my life ever be the same again? The shattering news has been announced that Olly Murs and Caroline Flack are leaving the X Factor. Will the world now stop turning?
I am guessing that this is very important news since it’s everywhere in the media, including the Guardian’s website. I know of Olly Murs. He is a pop singer who first emerged on a programme called the X Factor, a talent show to find Britain’s best karaoke singer. Olly is actually much better than your average karaoke singer with at few decent tunes to his name, not, mind you, any that I could actually name. Caroline Flack is a mystery to me, although thanks to the magic of Google, I discover that she is a ‘TV presenter’ of a large number of shows I have never seen.
The TV presenter as star is not new. TV presenters, more often than not, presented TV shows, often very well, because they had no talent to do anything else. The cuddly north eastern duo of Ant and Dec are two of the biggest stars in the land, so big that even I have heard of them, even though I have never seen a single show they’ve been in. Everyone tells me they are brilliant. I must remember to watch them presenting something one day.
From what I can gather, the X factor is not really about the karaoke singers enjoying their 15 minutes or less of fame; it’s about the presenters and the judges. I would think that’s quite logical since the X Factor has been going for 12 years and the sea of talent must have been trawled, maybe over-fished, during that time. I cannot say that with any degree of knowledge since – yes, you’ve guessed it! I’ve never seen the X Factor but I have seen the odd bit of The Voice and they are definitely scraping the barrel for new talent, featuring ‘discoveries’ like septuagenarians like Bernie Clifton and fading pop stars like Buck’s Fizz member Jay Aston. How apt that a show that’s past its sell by date should be going to ITV. A match made in hell.
“Is this the end for the X Factor?” says the Guardian, to which my reply is, “Ask someone who gives a ****!” Whether Simon Cowell, Cheryl Whateverhernameisthisweek and whoever the rest of the judges are there, I don’t care. I am sure there will be some new presenters to take over from Olly and Caroline in due course because the world is packed with here today, gone tomorrow TV presenters desperate to present things.
How about Ant and Dec? They seem to be on just about everything else and they’re definitely built to last.
