Shrek Factor

[Sweder]

Despite having nothing to do with the talentless parade of spotty youths on ITV at the weekends I really enjoyed this wonderful piece by Caitlin Moran in today's Times2 (Celebrity Watch).

Gigantic disruptions in the Showbusiness Force this week as, for the first time, The X Factor fired a contestant, Frankie Cocozza, 18.

Cocozza, an overconfident, undertalented drinker with a voice like a goose being kicked down a slide and hair that looked like Chewbacca’s arse, was thrown off the show on Wednesday, having apparently “broken the Golden Rule”.

At first, this gnomic statement from ITV1 flummoxed CW. There’s quite a few “Golden Rules” knocking around out there. The most obvious one is the ethic of reciprocity — “Do as you would be done by”, which factors in every religion and is the underpinning of all human rights.

But this, surely, wasn’t why Cocozza had been thrown off X Factor. Let’s face it, Simon Cowell doesn’t give a toss about the ethics of reciprocity: his management contracts for X Factor winners are binding for ten years, and threaten legal action for anyone who slags off X Factor — which Cowell wouldn’t like for himself at all.

X Factor isn’t a very ethic-y, reciprocal-ish show. CW’s pretty sure that wasn’t the Golden Rule Frankie broke.

Confused, CW researched other “Golden Rules” Frankie might have transgressed. In fiscal policy, for instance, the “Golden Rule” is a ban on leveraged investment for government spending plans. Had Cocozza pre-taxed an electorate to kick-start a new funding initiative in education or health? Observing both his lack of parliamentary mandate and his stunned blank eyes — like two Maltesers rolling around on a plate — CW concluded not.

CW also considered the classic Saturday Night Live musical parody 3-Way, in which Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg and Lady Gaga explain that if you’ve got two guys and one chick, the “Golden Rule” is that “It’s not gay/ if it’s in a three-way/With some honey in the middle there’s some leeway” — but that sketch went out in March and, let’s face it, Frankie wasn’t even born then.

Thank goodness that an hour later, ITV1 clarified the “Golden Rule” Frankie had broken: he apparently “boasted about cocaine-fuelled sex sessions”. This, at least, made sense of last Sunday’s show, where host Dermot O’Leary revealed that Cocozza had slept “for just 30 minutes” after his performance on Saturday. Coincidentally, CW had slept only 30 minutes after Frankie’s performance on Saturday, too — haunted, as it was, by flashbacks of a man singing Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling as if someone were playing Bash the Rat on his thorax.

But here we are: just 24 hours away from the next instalment of X Factor, which is now haemorrhaging both contestants and judges at such a rate that, if the exodus continues, ITV1 may have to look into beginning X Factor conscription by the end of the month.

As it waits for its call-up papers, though, CW can only cast a glance in Frankie’s direction — back at his mum’s house in Brighton — and issue a baffled: “Dude! Dude! Your job was singing just ONE SONG A WEEK, then doing the patented ‘Phone-Vote For Me’ hand-gesture! How could you screw this up? It’s a working week even lighter than Prince Andrew’s! Could you not just lay off the birds and the bugle until Christmas?”