Simon Hoggart

The price of fame

The X Factor is back on ITV, and it’s fascinating, being a paradigm of British life.

issue 28 August 2010

The X Factor is back on ITV, and it’s fascinating, being a paradigm of British life.

The X Factor is back on ITV, and it’s fascinating, being a paradigm of British life. Persons of little or no talent are assembled to be jeered. Those who have a modicum of ability are praised as if they had just sung Wagner’s Liebestod faultlessly at Covent Garden. This audience would applaud Beachcomber’s Directory of Huntingdonshire Cabmen if whoever was reading it remembered to tear up around the letter B.

Rather like in Nineteen Eighty-Four we have the two minutes of hate followed by a great wave of sentimentality, as if a knickerbocker glory packed with cream and raspberry sauce had been laced with castor oil. ‘The X Factor gives everyone a chance to be a star,’ says the voice-over. No, it doesn’t. It gives anyone the chance to be humiliated. Or adored, as if 100 Labradors were licking their face.

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