[Red Moon]

Leon is king of the bungle

SATURDAY night’s big ITV final and here come The Max Wall sisters, Ned Beatty from Deliverance, Yoko Oh-no, half a dozen other whack-jobs and the Four Chippendales Of The Apocalypse.

Big lads, they are too.

But all four of them are buckling under the weight of Emma Chawner, the island-sized Flump in the home-made dress, as she puffs her way through One Moment In Time.

The auditionees. Unwitting victims of the most shameful, exploitative and appalling moment of the entire series.

Yet, simultaneously, also one of the most priceless, unmissable and funny moments of the series as well.

A scene that left Dermot O’Leary wondering: “Has anyone slipped through the net?”

All of them, seeing as you ask, Dermot.

They slipped through the net, past the nurses, out of the back of the van, with the square wheels, and one of them even went on to win the whole damn competition.

It’s The X Factor, in case you hadn’t already guessed. So we start with an apology.

Stupidly, I’d assumed sanity would prevail, Rhydian, the only good singer, would win easily, ITV would have learnt how to organise a proper phone vote and we could move on to other, happier subjects.

How naive can you be?

X Factor IV was always heading for a disastrous end. An evening that started with a 6ft 2in Elf shoving his head between the legs of the girl from Same Difference, during the Mariah Carey routine, then got progressively weirder and dumber.

Highs/lows included: The Lord Provost of Edinburgh hiding behind a “Leon King” poster. Rhydian’s great aunt Lou telling him (in a thick Welsh accent): “My hat is with you.” A black and white number from The Technicolor Dreamcoat.

And I also liked the idea, if not the execution, of hanging Same Difference from the studio ceiling.

But then on came the whack-jobs, all bets were off and suddenly Leon was declared the winner.

A nice enough lad, clearly, but he can’t sing or dance (why else do you think Kylie Minogue wanted to duet with him and not Rhydian?). Not a decision, therefore, that reflected particularly well on the voting public, Dannii Minogue’s song choices or the klutz who put together the particularly unflattering VT package of Rhydian’s “highlights”.

However, if you’re looking for the real villains of the piece then look no further than ITV and The X Factor itself.

A show that always gets the winner it deserves, TXF spent five months nauseating us with sob stories. So the winner was probably bound to be the Best Sob Story. All the cred this show had gained through Leona Lewis wiped out in one vote.

And any remaining goodwill eliminated by the fact, despite everything that’s happened this year, thousands of Rhydian fans still couldn’t vote.

Beach

News that should appal Simon Cowell.

So where is he then?

In the trenches, with his sleeves rolled up, tin hat on, fighting the good fight with everyone else from ITV . . . ?

Course not, dummy. Sunday morning he legged it to the Sandy Lane Hotel, Barbados.

Life’s a beach, when someone else is paying.

Source: The Sun