Hex Factor

At this early stage, it's perhaps a good idea to point out that I've only ever seen one episode of The X-Factor. However, in my defence, it was from this series, so suck it up. I remember a number of acts from that solitary, drunken episode, during which I was carving a pumpkin to look like Adolf Hitler. The one I remember most was Diana Vickers, who had the most interesting voice and style of all of the amorphous blobs on parade. And also because she sung Man In The Mirror, a song with a key change which is the stuff of legend.

I also have a faint recollection of a boy band who look like a front for a crime syndicate - one of them sings, acting as a distraction as the other three rob you - but who apparently made it all the way to the final. There was also a woman who always sang in Spanish, seemingly by way of some bizarre psychological tic, a woman old enough to be everyone else's mother and who may well have been inside and, another finallist, Eoghan Quinn, who has a face looks like it has been drawn by a child on a paper plate. He is also in possession of one of those Gaelic names which Irish people like to give their children to mess the English up, so I will hereby refer to him as Wogan. However, they were not, on the whole, a distinguished bunch.

No surprise, then, that someone who had left an indelible blank on me emerged as the winner. Alexandra Burke is, apparently, 20 years old and from North London. Alexandra Burke. Alexandra Burke. Alexandra Burke.

Now I have remembered that her name is Alexandra Burke (or something), we can reflect on what it means. In the short term, it means she'll almost certainly have the Christmas number 1 single, which younger readers may not realise was once a big deal before the days of Pop Idol-style programmes filling the festive charts with Beauticians, Binmen and Assistant managers from River Island. In the long term, who knows? Looking back at the winners of these shows, it's pretty much 50-50 as to whether she (her name is Alexandra Burke, remember) will carve out a career as successful as any of her vanquished peers. Because although The X-Factor and the pop charts are popularity contests, the one thing neither can control is time or talent. I think Diana Vickers will most likely make a significant impact in the short to mid-term. Indeed, I hope she does. She's easily the most interesting talent I saw on display, plus The Daily Mail seem to hate her. What's not to like?

The boy band, whose name is JLS and who came in second place, will probably sink without a trace, but who knows? There's not been a really big boy band to get all the girls' knees knocking for a worryingly long time. Meanwhile, Wogan, who the tabloid press will have you believe has already porked Diana Vickers and, as such, already has celebrity form, will probably hang around like the sort of fart you do and then leave the room with it still in tow.

I'm not against these talent shows. Some of the people that have emerged from them - Girls Aloud and Will Young particularly - have really gone on to produce. However, in Will Young's case, it's doubtful that someone with his talent would have continued to reside within anonymity. Girls Aloud really needed to be put together - the majority of girl groups and boy bands being as organic as their manager's wife's breasts - and that's another area in which these talent shows have something to offer. People have been putting pop acts like this together behind closed doors for years. What Pop Idol, Popstars and all the rest have done is turn it into a socio-anthropological exercise. Notebooks at the ready.

However, what sociological investigations can't ever guarantee is entertainment. Because, mostly, the contestants are planks. Even the better ones, the ones who reach the latter stages - which can't even be guaranteed since the idiot general public are doing the hiring and firing - are pretty much indistinguishable from each other. Occasionally, as in life and as they would be behind closed doors, someone brilliant will come along or be unearthed. But, considering the likelihood of fallow years to follow, could someone not just film the whole thing and let us know later? Because currently, The X-Factor is as boring as watching the Lotto draw, but much, much longer.

Princess Beatrice

The Daily Mail is a filthy and hateful vessel at the best of times, but it's one of the ultimate places to go online to see people being judged. From their site today comes exciting news that, using a trust fund set up by her great-grandmother, Princess Beatrice is looking to buy a £4 million student pad in Belgravia. This raises a number of significant issues.

The first of these is perhaps the fact I don't care about the money angle at all. Royal people, for good or bad, live in opulence. I know that going in. I find it hard to judge anyone given access to that sort of money by an accident of birth not wishing to spend it. Right, so, that over with, let's get to the juicy stuff.

Firstly, she looks a lot like her dad. Well, her dad dressed up as her mum. I can't recall if intra-marriage transvestism was a challenge in It's A Royal Knockout, but it should have been. She also looks a little like Marc Bolan. Either way, I hope she's honest enough with herself to realise exactly why a dragged-up Prince Andrew wearing plimsolls and dressed as a minicab's tissue box is allowed entry to London's most exclusive clubs. And is able to attract boys who are, to all extents and purposes, normal-looking.

Secondly, I feel the need to question exactly which university she will be attending. London is not particularly awash with old polytechnics and thickhouses. So, something must be at work here. Either I'm going to have to revise my general assumption - i.e. the royal family are all thick as pigshit - or I'm going to have to raise a canny eyebrow at the university admissions people. Top tip for parents of newborn children: be sure to name your child so they have the initials H.R.H. They'll never have any trouble in their entire life of application forms.

Girl-haired fop wows America

I've tried to dislike Russell Brand, I really have. He's the sort of trendy, A-list party fodder celebrity who could have been designed specifically to irk me. However, it's hard to look past the fact that he is actually brilliant. He's not the first long-haired, bearded bloke to convert the unbelievers, of course (you heard THAT here first, folks).

He's currently making US moviegoers a bit moist in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as this BBC news article points out. What struck me particularly was Tom Arnold's comments. They could well be the dictionary definition of "damn with faint praise".

"I've heard he's great... I'm anxious to see what he can do.Maybe he's the next Sacha Baron Cohen, the next Peter Sellers, the next Hugh Grant."

Miaow, Thomas.

If I was Peaches

I'd snitch on that little weasel for being underage and out in all the clubs.



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Celebrity facts number 1 - Alexa Chung

Kerry Katona's baby has a big nose

Controversial though this might be, but I don't like Kerry Katona. She's yet another beacon of stupidity held up to the British public with the message, it's brilliant to be stupid. Well, it's not. OK, it seems like a snobbish thing to say. Not everybody has the brains to have a university education. And the way these women are presented of paragons of all that is good and true in British life is by no means their doing - for that we have their rat bastard publicists, who, of course, are all highly gifted Oxbridge types. Nevertheless, if the world were just (a phrase which I can imagine I'll be using frequently here), people like Kerry Katona or Jade Goody would have absolutely no pull over the lives or attitudes of anyone outside their own immediate families and friends.

Of course, whilst Jade Goody also took advantage of her social role as a famous fat person to release umpteen million fitness DVDs, Katona has been working to help the cause of childhood obesity no end by playing up to her role as Working Class Supermum, hawking additives and gristle on television. It was perhaps at this point that Katona managed to cross the line, the previous best, set by Goody in the 'Holy Moses, That's One Unlovable 'Personality Ye Got There'' stakes.

The distinction between 'personality' and 'person' is of course a hugely significant one. I am fully aware I have no right to judge Katona or Jade Goody as people. I do, however, have the right to howl indignantly at the moon in anguish at these publically-projected personas that are inflicted on us like a fat, stupid Batsignal. You do have to start to wonder, though, if a little dig at the former might be warranted when they themselves blur the line between these two roles. It's pretty difficult to imagine that Katona - or at least, Her People - were not in some way responsible for the publication in the nationals of a picture of her newborn baby, Jesus O'Nazareth Katona (37lbs 4oz). I could be wrong here, but to me this is a fairly distasteful thing to do. It's up there with people who get their baby's ears pierced. Stop accessorising your bloody children, you vapid hoons. They are not a new handbag. They are a human being. Perhaps you've forgotten what it's like to be one of those.

I was immoderately amused to read in the ever-wonderful Love It! magazine this week that SHOCK! Madonna insists on her daughter Lourdes doing SURPRISE! her chores and OH MY LIFE! her homework. It then struck me that you really don't often see pictures of Mrs. Richie's eldest (or any of the subsequent Richies) in the press. This shows class. It shows a woman who understands their child's right to grow up by themselves, rather than as some premiere outfit-completing trinket. Perhaps the difference is that Madonna is famous as an artist, whilst Kerry Katona clings onto celebrity simply on the basis that she is Kerry Katona. Exploiting everyone you have to hand to prolong this, though, is fairly wanton.

Celebrity spotter part one - Joe Ledley

Joe Ledley, the Cardiff City footballer, rose to national prominence recently on the back of his team's progression to the FA Cup Final. Ledley it was who scored the goal in the 1-0 semi-final victory over Barnsley, a proud boast for any footballer, not least one who plays in English football's second tier. Celebrity Spoiler is proud to be able to announce the reason for his stellar rise to prominence, thanks to our Cardiff-based celebrity scout Mace. Just days before his day in the sun at Wembley, Ledley was seen in a Cardiff branch of Morrisons, intently staring at a packet of chicken kievs, in a psychic showdown twixt man and hen.

Ledley, it has been said, is perhaps the least bright of the current crop of Cardiff City players, but even he has the moxy to understand the importance of protein to professional sportsdoers. Whilst it is not clear if he decided to purchase the kievs, his on-pitch performance the following weekend was the sort that made Premier League clubs sit up and take notice. Such a display can only be powered by chicken. Morrisons Chicken Kievs.