Did You See That

Wow, Laura was surely one of the favourites and had delivered some amazing performances in her time on the X-Factor but fate conspired to knock her out of Saturday’s X-Factor. She was in the bottom two with Ruth, and Ruth seems to excel in that situation. Once again, she rocked it out and was saved by Louis. Louis thought that Daniel should have been in the bottom two but I liked his performance and it would have been Rachel and Laura in the bottom two this week for me.

Next week is Best Of British… here’s my predictions of what songs they might sing, just for fun:

• Eoghan - Careless Whisper (George Michael)
• Ruth - Daniel (Elton John)
• JLS - Back for Good (Take That)
• Daniel - Sex Bomb (Tom Jones)
• Rachel - Son Of A Preacher Man (Dusty Springfield)
• Diana - Thank You (Dido)
• Alexandra - Diamonds Are Forever (Shirley Bassey)

What do you think they might do?

In week four of the competition, it was Disco week. Have to say, considering of the the classic disco tracks they could have been chosen from, the songs were particularly uninspiring and some of them were arguably not even disco.

Daniel continues to get a load of stick from the judges, but this week I thought he was actually pretty good.  Simon said it was “arguably the worst performance” they’ve ever had on the show. His favourite word seems to be”arguably”- I’d say he’s arguably talking rubbish. Perhaps he is so over the top in his criticisms because he knows the game by now and that people will vote to keep the underdog. It’s a TV show after all and Daniel’s story has better narrative than most.

After Austin’s performance, Simon said he hoped he stayed in. Interesting comment and I wondered if he was attempting to lead the viewers because he raised the prospect that Austin wouldn’t be back, and guess what, he won’t!

Alexandra, Laura, Diana and JLS were fantastic. Notice also that Will Young sounded as good live as he does on the radio. Compare that with Girls Aloud when they performed live!

Unless you have been living on another planet, you can’t have escaped the furore surrounding Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. Yes, I think they were wrong but what a feeding frenzy over what wasn’t really that big a deal and should have not been aired by the producers. Radio 2 presenters have been giving their reaction and a devastated looking Jeremy Vine says he says he will be interested to see how Jonathan Ross can come back from this - with his tone inferring that he shoudn’t - and saying he hopes Ross has apologised to the now ex-controller on whose watch this happened.

An edgy comedian pushing the limits sometimes needs to be reined in but I don’t think that in itself damages the BBC’s credibility. What does do enormous damage to the BBC’s credibility is when serious programming - such as the Election night coverage - reduced to an absolute joke by Jeremy Vine and the computer graphics department with cringemaking displays that embarrass us all. So on the topic of apologising, Mr Vine, how about you say sorry for making the once might Beeb look absurd with your awful election night performance?

Just in case you missed it…