Back in the UK for the first time in three years plus there are only two topics of conversation that seem to matter:
1. The Olympics
and
2. The X Factor.
(or 3. The weather as my niece Soussan just reminded me, but that needn't bother us here
Both of them are everywhere. Turn on the TV and you are inundated with images of boy bands singing out of tune and athletes claiming the Bronze with great fanfare. I don't think there has been such an outbreak of national jongoism since the Battle of Agincout. But enough about 1D.
Sunday afternoon I turned on the TV for a seemingly endless X Factor "Best And Worst" off, and with this special American Idol should officially sue the damn show. Talk about AI redux, and I don't think having no age limits and adding a cash price changes things. What does is the endless list of pop bands the damn show has broken. And not all dogs. Olly Murs, the original cheeky chappy, is a charming man, Cher Lloyd has stepped into Lily's shoes and 1D is, really, the first boy band to break the States in decades.
JLS (an X Factor phenom) didn't and neither did one of the biggest UK bands in the past 20 years, Take That, though Gary Barlow joined the show as a judge.
If you have seen the US version of the show (or American Idol for that matter) you will have a pretty clear idea as to what to expect only XFUS hasn't broken a sodding soul onto the Billboard charts and XFUK won't stop throwing folks up the charts. It is all rather vertiginous, the heights to which these bands will go to.
But despite Olly and Cher (and to a lesser degree 1D) is the music any good? Well, no, actually it is, by definition, pablum. The show takes folks with some talent, and then processes them and spits em out the other end so they resemble everybody who has come before them. This is not necessarily a bad thing: let we forget, somebody somewhere manufactures Aston Martins. But it is only alright if you don't pretend you are listening to something you aren't. For every singer who survives the rebuilding into product with an iota of originality left Susan Boyle, you say? She was on Britain Has Talent.
So I sat there in a stupor for hour after hour watching UK Olympian like singers of varying degrees of ability battle for a million bucks. And that is the UK in 2012. Well, that and Prime Minister David Cameron dancing Gangnam Style.
This is what they fought the Battle Of Britain for?