The X Factor - "boot camp" rounds
The X Factor - "boot camp" roundsAs 180 acts are slashed to just 24 in The X Factor, Sharon Osbourne is being assisted in the over-25s group by vocal coach Mark Hudson; a man with a silly turquoise beard dressed like Bertie Bassett. (Mark's face-fungus anomaly is never explained.)
Sharon's boot camp is full of tear-jerking tales. There's "blown-up-by-a-bomb" woman and "my-mum's-dead-ill-and-I'm-her-carer" bloke. Next to them there's "I-broke-my-spine-but-watch-me-shimmy-to-Kylie" lady, and a scary Brummie woman who cries a lot as her poor kiddies have never experienced life "in a big house with electric gates".
"Doing it all for me kiddies" is a common X Factor drone. I wish people would just be honest and say: "I'm doing this cos of my pig-headed urge to stand on a raised platform and murder Show Me Heaven by Maria McKee in every enormodome in Britain on the X Factor tour. I've no idea how "me kiddies" fit into that.
Sharon's final eight include Katie, who we're reminded in tragic tones every five minutes has "worked at the same factory for 20 years" and Kerry,a chirpy, determined lady in a wheelchair whose main disability seems to be the producers playing Kate Bush's This Woman's Work mournfully in the background whenever she appears.
Simon Cowell, supervising the under-24s, puts through Shaun, a child who's never yet managed to sing a whole song without dissolving into terrified blubbing (and when he does squeeze out a line sounds like Orville after a heavy punishment beating by Cuddles).Louis Walsh is mentoring the groups. He puts through my current top X Factor favourites: Scouse boyband Eaton Road (three camp boys in vests). Louis also puts through the Unconventionals, a seven-piece middle-England a cappella group, who bing and bong their way through Queen hits with ghoulish glee.
Obviously, none of this matters, as pretty boy Ashley with the long afro from Simon's group will win anyway. Bulletin over.
Labels: X Factor
posted by Freddy @ Friday, October 06, 2006
Comments: 0
