Strange as it might seem, in this world of niche, personalised digital content, but Saturday early evening in the UK has become a hotbed of good old-fashioned, mass-viewing TV entertainment.
And you have to take sides. Are you for ITV's X Factor, which had its final on Saturday. Or are you for BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing, which was at the semi final stage. The fact that I have absolutely no idea who won X Factor (and care even less) probably shows you where I stand. Our house is very much a Strictly house (and personal opinion - I thought it should have been Mark & Emma in the final, so showing you can't trust the great British public when it comes to voting - ah, the joys of democracy).
Where Strictly sees people you have actually heard of perform at and triumph in a genuinely difficult and highly technical activity, all X Factor manages to do (my view I know) is elevate a bunch of non-entities to a level of mediocrity that wouldn't look out of place in a karaoke bar.
Maybe it's because I'm a music snob, but it's all lowest common denominator MOR pop rubbish to me. And the pointlessness of X Factor is summed up perfectly by this theoretically positive comment by Sharon Osbourne (one of the show's judges) on last year's winner Shayne Ward (never heard of him or his music): "he has sold 2.5m records. But without winning the X Factor he wouldn't have sold one".
It's meant to be a justification of X-factor's value. But to me it perfectly captures why the show is such a waste of space. Genuine creativity and talent wins out (just look at Arctic Monkeys, Lilly Allan and all the other break-thru artists of recent years). It doesn't need the cheap publicity of peak time TV exposure to buy success.
So anyway, as Brucie would say, "keeeep dancing"!
