The X Factor - Week 5: Live Commentary

We interrupt normal poetic service to bring you the nation’s favourite live commentary on the X-Factor. By 'nation', I mean 'nation of citizens liable to read Surroundings even in passing'. This week is week 5. On every occasion so far, Surroundings has correctly predicted one of the acts sent home (even on weeks when no blogging was carried out – you’ll just have to take my word for it). That this is a fluke, I have no doubt. Be prepared for a shock this week when I get it wrong. As ever, I’ll blog live and paste in commentary as the show progresses.

Missed Cher. Thought the show began at 8pm, but it was 7.45pm. The judges didn’t seem to like it, but what do they know?

Mary is next. She looks nervous and isn’t quite getting it right. Well, it’s getting better as the song goes on. But not all that good. She seems less comfortable. I think she has a musical career ahead of her and will never work in Tesco again, no worries there. Mary is tearful, despite fairly positive comments. I’ll give 5 out of 10. Daughter says 9.

Here comes Katie, so daughter will give her 10. She was in the bottom two last week. One commentator suggests that was because Katie can be ‘annoying’. I agree, to be honest. My wife says her styling might be putting people off, as it’s very harsh week by week. It’s a Madonna/Lady Ga Ga (interchangeable) wig this week with tight black leather suit. Looks fine. She sings well enough. Some negative comments from judges. Cheryl says yes she is a drama queen, but so what? I’ll say 7. Daughter says... 10!

Next is Aiden. What song will he turn into a Radiohead dirge this week? I wish the judges would stop telling him to smile and be 18 and have fun etc. He likes singing moody dirgey songs. His voice is different from any other contestant the X Factor has ever had. He’s started really well, singing ‘Nothing Compares to You.’ But it’s a boring song. Probably sang it as well as it could have been sung. Zzzzzzzzz though. Apparently they changed his song 24 hours before the show. OK, I’ll give it 8. Daughter says 9.

Paije did well last week, partly because of the Amy W. song. Louie wants to see the ‘fun, bubbly Paije’ tonight. Hmmmm. He starts with ‘I’m a Believer.’ Not just as Neil D/Monkees copy version, to be fair. He does look as if he’s having fun. He segues into oh... whatja call it... and would have been better to stick to ‘I’m a Believer’ all the way through. Louie says he’s a little Lenny Henry (?). Simon says there was an ‘Austin Powers vibe’, and meant it as a compliment. The judges loved it. I think they have rather over-estimated how good that was! I’d give it 6. Daughter says 8.

Rebecca, who has been consistently the best every week so far, now has to keep the momentum going. The song is emotional and she has been crying while singing it in rehearsal. It’s Bob Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’. Fantastic song, of course. Rebecca is singing it brilliantly so far. I even think Bob would approve of this one. Nothing else to say – just superb. Louie says she ‘stands out,’ which is an understatement. I’ll give her 10. No one is going to top that tonight. Daughter says 9. Not often I give a higher mark than her...

Wagner! His vocals were seriously off last week, far more so than in earlier weeks, as if they no longer meant anything compared to the ‘performance’. This week, even worse, on ‘Viva Las Vegas’ – all over the place and out of tune. Loads of dancing girls doing a kind of can can, and now suddenly into ‘The Wonder of You’ without warning. He wanders around the girls who smile at him mock-hero-worshipfully. Simon says he liked it. Perhaps he feels that by criticising it, he might encourage people to vote for Wagner. I wonder if his run has come to an end. That was surely just too bad. He has a cult following, we’re told, and they may phone enough times to keep him in. Maybe. I’ll say 4. Daughter says 6.

Matt, now. Not too good last week, but had seemed like one of the favourites before that. I predict he’ll be back up there this week. Here he goes. Lots of falsetto. Very clear, perfectly pitched vocal, switching from high to low and back again. A song to remind everyone he can sing. Very much in his comfort zone. Louie says he is the one everyone has to beat. I prefer Rebecca, but I can see that he is very good and with a great recording voice in the X-Factor-mould. Simon says, “This is the Matt and Rebecca show tonight.” Of course, his own act, One Direction, are still to come. I’ll say 9. Daughter says 10.

Treyc enjoyed herself last week, but I thought it was too similar to the original. She looked great though in her little red Santa hat. I think she can probably sing as well as anyone, but needs to take a risk or two to stand out. A Bon Jovi ballad isn’t exactly what I had in mind as a risk. That said, she’s singing it really well. Simon says she needs passion and belief that she can win. Treyc says she has it but needs to show it. Hmmmm. Dunno if any of that matters. She just needs to do her best and sing really well and make songs sound like she's given something unique to it, surely? I’ll give her 7. Daughter says 9.

Finally, it’s One Direction, the boy band. I find them irritating, but they are full of energy and appeal to teenage girls. Simon reckons they’re about to ‘stamp out the opposition’ this week. With Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’? The usual energy, smiles, girls screaming from the audience. Yes, they’re doing well. They’ve cheered Cheryl up, apparently. Safe as houses this week, I reckon. I’ll say 7, although they probably deserve more. A grouch like me can’t go above 7 for them though. Daughter says 7 too.

Who’s in trouble this week? Hard to say. I’ll predict that Wagner or Mary could be up for the chop this week. The novelty acts running out of steam. Mind you, Treyc doesn’t stand out and might not attract voters, even though she sings well, and poor old Aiden sang a rotten song. But I’ll go for Wagner or Mary. Results tomorrow. Will this be my first wrong guess? I hope so – the pressure to get it right every week is beginning to get to me!

Cerrie At CBeebies

A few months back, Cerrie Burnell was appointed as a presenter with the BBC’s channel for small children, CBeebies. She was born with one arm and doesn’t try to disguise the fact. This led to a small number of parents complaining to the BBC. They claimed their children were scared of her. They feared it might give their children nightmares. They didn’t know how to explain why she only had one arm. They felt the BBC were only doing it to be politically correct, even at the expense of their children.

My feeling was that the complaints reflected more on the parents’ fears, their own inability to cope with difference, their own discomfort with disability, their own lack of communication skills. I don’t think children tend to be bothered in the slightest by this kind of thing.

However, I wondered about my own daughter. She is autistic – very intelligent and high-functioning, but nonetheless, she likes things to be ‘correct.’ She’s not the biggest fan of incompleteness and I wondered how she would react. Well, she didn’t seem to notice at all at first, although she perhaps did and never said anything. The months went by and nothing was ever mentioned.

A few nights ago, we were watching CBeebies together and she said to me, completely out of the blue, “Cerrie’s only got one arm.” I asked her if she minded that. “No,” she replied. There was a pause of about a minute. She then said, “I wish I only had one arm too.”

So, worried parents who are afraid your children might have nightmares – there’s your answer…

Finding the USA on a Map

The original clip of Miss South Carolina's desperate, inarticulate attempt to answer a question has been all over the Internet.

I must admit, I laughed. But I also felt sorry for her. It was a strange, unexpected question. She is young and was under pressure and obviously completely thrown by it. She does a much better job here on the Today programme.

I don't believe Americans would have more trouble finding the USA on a map than British people would have in finding the UK - and the same goes for any other country.

I mean, Charley from the recent UK series of Big Brother hadn't heard of Gandhi (between 30-60 seconds into the video), and the eventual winner, Brian, genuinely hadn't heard of William Shakespeare, so it's hardly surprising that some people have trouble identifying objects on maps.

Shilpa Wins, and Life Beyond Big Brother

So Bollywood star, Shilpa Shetty, won Celebrity Big Brother with 63 percent of the public vote, after a turbulent time in the house when she was the victim of alleged racist bullying by three other housemates – reality show contestant Jade Goody, model Danielle Lloyd, and singer Jo O’Meara. Shilpa seemed like a nice person and deserving winner. But in the aftermath of the programme, several things have disturbed me.

Big Brother presenter, Davina MacCall, felt Shilpa had won due to her lack of desire for revenge. Shilpa had a generosity about her and had been quick to forgive those who had given her a hard time – this was true. What disturbs me is that the UK public don’t extend the same forgiveness. Since the three tormentors have left the house, they have been the target of anger and hate. Their careers have been wrecked. Jade Goody, reportedly, fainted due to stress-related anxiety a few days ago. So while we may pick up the phone and vote for the face of forgiveness, we don’t forgive. It’s as if we want someone to do the forgiving for us, so that we don’t have to.

It’s a kind of faux-theological narrative. Shilpa on the sacrificial altar of the Big Brother house, enduring the suffering of racist bullying, forgiving those who don’t know what they are doing. She forgives on behalf of all those who can’t or won’t.

The Sun newspaper had a headline, Shilpa Wins for All of Us. We are now cleansed. Each vote for Shilpa has pronounced us Not Guilty. As for the three evildoers, well, they can burn in Hell. And The Sun, fresh now from its campaign against the terrible racists, can get back to the business of telling us how those awful asylum seekers are using up our taxes, and how the UK will fast become an Islamic state if all good materialists don’t stand up to defend our 'traditions'. But don’t worry, we voted for Shilpa, with The Sun's fervent backing, and that now makes The Sun, and us, OK.

I'm not defending the behaviour of the three women, nor am I saying they shouldn't account for their actions, nor that their apologies weren't due. Indeed, I disliked all three of them. But let's not get carried away. Imagine how many people's lives would be in ruin if they were sacked from their jobs and hauled out for public humiliation because they had at one point in their lives made a racist comment. How many Sun journalists would hang onto their jobs?

Jade Goody's Eviction

Jade Goody was yesterday evicted from the Big Brother House with 82 percent of the public vote. That means that nearly one in five people voted to evict Shilpa Shetty.

They made up. Jade told Shilpa that she hadn’t meant to be racist and Shilpa accepted the explanation. But soon after her first apology, Jade called her “Shilpa Poppadum” behind her back, was called to account in the Diary Room, and had to make her apologies all over again. Once more Shilpa accepted the apology, but hinted to Jade that many Indian people wouldn’t have liked the comment at all. Jade spent half and hour crying in the diary room with regret at her previous behaviour, as if it had all suddenly sunk in.

Cailleach’s comment in the comments box of my previous article on this likened the bullying to what goes on in a school playground, and it strikes me that the protagonists were indeed behaving like children, and that playgrounds are full of such behaviour on a daily basis, and that newspapers don’t spend much time getting mad about it (although the same papers that criticise Jade do get mad about, for example, the number of immigrants entering the country and the money being shelled out to welcome seekers of political asylum, and...well, you get the idea).

David Aaronovitch makes some telling points in his This Trash Makes You Feel Righteous – Get Real article in The Times. I don’t agree with everything he says, and there is a hint of self-righteousness about it too (unavoidable in a debate like this, I guess), and I think Big Brother has the right to instigate debate as much as any art form, but his case makes me think. An excerpt:

"Mrs Poppadum? We’d never say that behind anyone’s back, would we? It’s not us, it’s her. She’s the racist, sling her out. The Sun headline yesterday, accompanied by six horrible pics of Jade (whom the paper monstered last time around, as well) was “Evict the face of hate”. The irony was that the page itself was the face of hate. A columnist condemned Jade’s hate speech. “She shrieks racist obscenities, her piggy eyes bulging as she struts round the house like a demented toad.” And that, presumably, is just what Our Lord would have written if He were a columnist.

"BB satisfies our taste for cruelty. But what is so odd is that to discuss real things we have to make them unreal first, and then describe them as reality. Maybe we’ll understand better when art catches up with this moment, and we all troop off, replete with salience, to see the tragic Jade Goody — the Opera."

Celebrity Big Brother and Racism

A busy week! Too much stress. Although I did manage to complete a poem for the Scottish National Galleries poetry competition and will send it in today.

I watched Celebrity Big Brother last night. The controversy centres around the treatment of Shilpa Shetty, a star of Bollywood movies. Thousands of complaints alleging racism and scape-goating against her by three other housemates have poured into the Channel 4 studio.

What surprises me is Channel 4’s denial that overt racism has taken place. The normally oh-so-politically-correct channel don’t seem to me to have been paying much attention.

Jade Goody, who became famous due to exhibiting crass stupidity and being a blabbermouth who could always be relied on to speak before thinking (on a previous Big Brother series), argued bitterly with Shilpa last night. Jade and two other housemates (Jo, an ex-singer of a commercial pop vocal group, and Danielle, a model who was disgraced after winning a competition while dating the judge) have all made comments that seem racist to me (one of the two, being served chicken cooked by Shilpa, commented about its possible lack of cleanliness, as “you can never be sure where her hand has been”).

The three non-entities (edit: as Harry has pointed out in the comments box, it's unfair of me to call Jo a non-entity, as she was a successful pop star), who have become famous simply for being non-entities, giggle hysterically as they mimic Shilpa's Indian accent (Shilpa got back at them last night by suggesting they should take some elocution lessons. Ha!). Jade persists in addressing her as Shipla, pretending she can't pronounce such a foreign name correctly.

Shilpa is no shrinking violet and can take care of herself. Jade got mad, almost hysterical, last night when in the course of the argument Shilpa commented that Jade was famous only for being on a reality TV show. This is obviously a sore point with Jade and her foaming-at-the-mouth reaction speaks volumes about her own fragile ego. After all, what Shilpa says is only the truth. But when Shilpa left the room, Danielle clearly said, “I wish she’d f*** off home!” Later in the Diary Room, Big Brother asked her what she’d meant by that. A look of horror passed over Danielle’s face. Had she really said that? She hadn’t meant “home”, she said. But that’s exactly what she had said and meant at the time. Will she ever work in modelling again?

Now Carphone Warehhouse are threatening to withdraw their sponsorship of the programme, not wanting to be associated with the racism – understandable of course. (Edit: In fact they have now just pulled out of their sponsorship deal). It is sordid, depressing television. But television, especially reality TV, is only a mirror to reality. It shows us celebrities as they are. It may help certain companies to reconsider who they get to wear their products. It may one day cure the public of an obsession.

It might also wake all of us up. What would our egos be like if we ended up like them, so many of them famous for nothing that’s required any talent whatsoever? And yet we hear Jade boasting that she’s been named as the “25th most infinluential [meaning “influential”] person on the planet!” And then telling Shilpa to stop going around with “her head stuck up her arse.” And then telling the others that she isn't "escape-goating the Indian." The irony is sad, depressing, almost laughable.