Louis Walsh !!!!

[ladylloyd]

puh-lease! The Conway's over Maria??>

I actually am of the people who enjoy the Conway's, but to pick them over Maria is just bonkers.....its so obvious that its because they are Irish, and I loved the audiences and Kate Thornton's reactions as they obviously couldn't believe what had happened...I wish Sharon had stuck up for Maria a tad more, but she did give her point....
what an idiot - think this could do Louis a lot of harm...

- had to start an x-factor thread as its seems there is no where to talk about it on here....

[Cathal]

Such a vile little excuse for a man

[thisispop]

Am I the only one who is cynical - who thinks the whole competition is as genuine as a WWE fight?

What great publicity for the show, especially after it got beat in the TV rating last week by Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing - Zoe Ball to win!!!

[Poptastic!]

Maybe he'll get sacked now! Yaaaaaay!!!

Jessica

[nickinoo]

I feel a bit sorry for The Conway Sisters. They're the bitches now. But yes, Maria is amazing, far too good for X-factor. She's had enough exposure to get noticed now and hopefully she'll get signed up by the right people. Brenda's the only decent singer left now.

The most entertaining part of last night's show was watching Chico make an arse of himself. How fucking awful was that performance? He made a dire song sound even worse. What is the point of him? He's an annoying little shit. He's got the personality of a, well, he's a twat, and he's not even particularly nice looking.

[ladylloyd]

yeh I cant stand Chico - if he does that what time is it thing on more time i will scream! ....think its funny how the audience were booing the conways....! they are so bloody boring though in interviews and stuff....
Maria is actually signed up with a publishing deal and has written some songs which have been published before the x-factor so thats good to know.

Brenda is by far the only good one left...and i love the blonde from Journey South - i like them..

[Bananarama's Bra Strap]

Surely the Conways should be disqualified as they've already released an album?

[AugustMoon]

What do people make of the phone vote about the choice, after the show? I think maybe the electorate basically disapproved of itself there, even if they needed cajoling for that to happen.

Think about it. The judge (Walsh) had to decide which of the bottom 2 to kick out, so there was a 50/50 chance that the act he picked actually got the lowest number of votes too. But when the voters were asked if he had made the right decision only 8% said he had, while 92% said he hadn't. That's a ridiculously massive majority, which shows what a leading question it was. Leading, but not necessarily misleading, because it could countercheck a distorting "PC-ness". (When we feel that our actions are noticed we become more PC: so when we're asked to be against something we behave differently than when we're asked to be in support for somehing, etc. In this case it must have been nice to be against somebody (Walsh) who was against somebody.) Maybe accentuating is a better way to describe it? If the question had been, "Do you think it was bad that this act got the least (or bottom-2) number of votes?" the number of "Yes" would surely have been substantial too.

It's not unique that an electorate disapproves of itself - remember Germany 1933. It's probably better when it's confined to marginal questions/groups. I dread to think what might happen if the Yankees one day wake up and think - "Ooops! Another Hollywood 'actor' as governor/president... This must be stopped..."

I didn't watch the actual show though. I missed Chico.

[mwsbitch]

It was a total farce but Sharon had picked that awful nasally Chenai over 4Tune for an equally ridiculous reason so she had it coming...

[AugustMoon]

mwsbitch said:

It was a total farce but Sharon had picked that awful nasally Chenai over 4Tune for an equally ridiculous reason so she had it coming...

This is news to me, since I've only caught fragments of the series. At the time I did think that 4Tune sounded good enough, but it wasn't until later I noticed how amateurish Chenai is. So that incident conforms to thisispop's view that the judge's bickering seems similar to WWE fights.

What I've found interesting all along is how the format of the show could be a response to how Pop Idol turned out. This is still the subject of a court case, isn't it? so one has maybe better tread carefully in this area. But it would be strange if the X-Factor format Simon Cowell designed wasn't inspired by his experience as a judge on Pop Idol. And it would also be strange if he didn't try to improve on the format, if possible.

To give the judges power to veto the viewers' decision would be such an improvement, if Cowell felt that the viewers indeed got it wrong in Pop Idol sometimes. And if he designed the new rules with that in mind, he could incorporate that detail as part of an entertaining whole. Entertaining like WWE fights are. The problem from that point of view could be that Sharon Osborne and Cowell himself are quite telegenic, and can live up to those roles, whereas maybe Louis Walsh isn't, and can't?

So my idea now is that the new precautions might not be strong enough in some cases. This is something that is parallel to the judges' in-fighting. It's a complex issue, which is why I try to clarify myself here.

Another question is why this hasn't happened in the US. American Idol has survived for four seasons now without a major hitch, so there wouldn't be the same need to tinker with the format like this. I take for granted that what's behind this has to do with there being another kind of "winner" mentality in America than there is in Britain. Granted, in both countries there's a general underdog support, but it takes different forms. Maybe it's more accentuated in Britain - it's difficult to imagine a real-life American antihero like Eddie the Eagle, isn't it?

The thing is a universal, of course, think of David/Goliath. And it could be more accentuated in our era the further east you go, with Russian communism being a possible example of this. I think maybe even something like Abba's "The Winner Takes It All" could have been a reaction against a too overt American winner mentality, taking its title from an (in)famous "winner take all" match between Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver (follow-up to an earlier Jimmy Connors match). That English phrase was around in Swedish media at that time anyway, and the concept was probably generally felt to be doubtful.


But, independent of this, both American Idol and the British equivalents are getting less and less surprising with each new season now, and I wonder if they can really survive that. If the sense of excitment is gone it won't matter how high the quality is. Maybe.

[ladylloyd]

! fair enough

[Martino]

put's on some sort of muppet, hobbit, irish hybrid accent:- 'Okay everybody...'

seriously listen to him when he's introducing one of his acts.

[ladylloyd]

yeh! and ALL he ever has to say his 'He's a young lad'
yeh we know and you know Louis how young he is.....obviously all he is thinking about in regards to Nicholas/Shayne.

[PeterJ]

If I were Nicholas or Shayne, I'd be quite worried about now...

[dirtypop]

martino said:

put's on some sort of muppet, hobbit, irish hybrid accent:- 'Okay everybody...'

seriously listen to him when he's introducing one of his acts.

Don't even get me started on fuckface Louis introducing his acts. Does he have to say the same thing every fucking week?

"He's young, he's cool It's Nicholas"
"This is a young guy from Manchester"

Yeh we bloody know Louis you've been telling us for like 4 weeks now. Twat.