The awful runs and runs as the brilliant is all too brief

Date Published: {J}

There are times when the prospect of having your toe nails removed with a pliers, sticking pins in one’s eyes or extracting a tooth by tying a piece of string to the knob of a door and slamming it with force seems infinitely more pleasurable than watching an episode of X Factor.

It is really disturbing how an episode of this horrendously awful talent show can dominate conversations in pubs, restaurants and work places but there are those who are completely consumed by it and it is difficult to understand exactly why.

Having been on the periphery of this latest series, it was with some trepidation that I decided to give it the benefit of my attention on Saturday evening and happened to switch on when an act called Misha B was called upon to perform. It was my understanding that she struggled to survive in previous installments.

The scary looking girl belted out a song – and I mean that in every sense of the word – that was not very palatable to the ears as I briefly wondered how she made it to this stage of the competition and feared for the quality of the other acts that were remaining.

And then when she finished and the attention was turned towards the panel of judges, Louis Walsh was hopping around in his seat and bursting to pay tribute to her performance but this was nothing that I didn’t expect, with him having been involved in the likes of Westlife and Boyzone.

But then they all joined in, with some of them saying it was her best performance yet. Even Gary Barlow, who models himself as the next Simon Cowell, was fulsome in his praise for her which spoke volumes about what a load of rubbish this show really is. How anyone could think this person’s singing was anything above deplorable is simply beyond comprehension.

It seems that this programme has now gone off in quite a different direction as some of the failed contestants are trying to make names for themselves by going to the tabloids and bitching about their fellow performers or the judges and it is all getting a bit silly really.

Suffice to say that this programme did not warrant any further viewing and anyone who gets excited about the prospect of watching the latter stages of this contest would really want to get their life in some sort of order.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.