It was all change on The X Factor with the difference being immediately clear.
Some of the acts were quite good! No really they were – at least compared to last year.
Admittedly it was the first episode but to at least five of them were better than 2014’s winner. (You know, what’s his face…Ben Haenow or as I call him Ben Whereisnow?
Yes realising that the show had become a laughing stock,
Kaiser Cowell had belatedly taken drastic action to revamp it. Presenter Dermot O’Dreary, ancient mentor/court jester Louis Walsh, and Mel B had gone. Even the programme’s booming iconic announcer Peter Dickson HAD BEEN SILENCED.
Instead, re-casting himself as the musical Charlie in Charlie’s Angels, Cowell had surrounded himself with pretty young things Cheryl Tweedy-Cole-Fernandez-Versini (32), Nick ‘Grimmy’ Grimshaw (31) and irritating Olly Murs (31), all of whom should take a line out of Prince’s songbook and start acting their age not their shoe-size. You’re all a bit old to be doing High Fives and using words like ‘sick’ and ‘awesome.’
Caroline Flack (“35”) was hanging around too – mostly to flutter her eyelashes at any boy singers and hug their mums when they went through or went home.
On the plus side, Simon unveiled his big summer from title rivals the BBC – Rita Ora a presence as attractive and refreshing as her namesake, Kia-Ora.
We’ll move swiftly past the opening item in which the new panel of judges participated in a pointless pastiche of Mission Impossible.
Cheryl was introduced as Cheryl Fernandez-Versini even though she will always be Cheryl Cole to us, and her record label. With a new haircut that made her look like a little old lady, for every quality performance you could see Wor Cheryl sitting there thinking: ‘wow ! How the hell do they get all those notes IN TUNE ?!’
Grimmy meanwhile was described as ‘the man who wakes everyone up in the morning and knows more about music than most.’
He’s the breakfast DJ on Radio One not the head of EMI, a camp buffoon clearly cast here as the poor man’s David Walliams.
The boss himself was hailed as ‘heading up the family’ – as if The X Factor was The Waltons, not the most ruthless, heartless, enterprise in the music business or on TV.
On the other hand, since the Birth of his baby King Cowell does seem to have undergone something of a personality by-pass and turned into a lovely, smiley guy: not good.
If he’s going to vote for eccentric/unhinged acts like Susan Pryce who can we rely on to see sense?
Here’s how the first show of the new age went.
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