Never Mind The Strictly Come X Factor!

So I couldn't be bothered to write separate posts about all of last night's TV. So sue me.

Strictly up first, chronologically speaking. Of course, I mooted a boycott due to Sergeantgate, but it's hard to maintain a boycott when you're alone at home of a cold Saturday evening and it's just there. Strictly this week seemed to have been designed with the intent of distracting truculent bloggers from writing about John Sergeant. By which I mean that you might switch on with the full intent of writing about John Sergeant, but it's bloody hard to stay focused when Tess Daly is wearing a black bondage boob tube with a tablecloth tucked in the front. (Later in the evening, Simon Amstell on Never Mind the Buzzcocks quizzed guest Alesha Dixon (still Britain's most perfect female) on her views about Tess being "dead behind the eyes", to which I would reply: so would you be if forced to dress as Undertaker Barbie.) Within two dances, the judges had nearly drawn blood in an argument over Christine and Matthew's unremarkable [insert whatever dance they were doing here; cannot be bothered to look it up.] Overmarking Rachel Steven's Foxtrot with four perfect tens was a late salvo to encourage viewer outrage away from the JS target, but none of this was ever going to work against Kristina Rihanoff's tears of farewell. "I admire you, I respect you, I adore you," she told John. Angry viewer from London allowed herself a little snivel.

But no time for mawkishness, because it was straight over to ITV for X Factor: the Take That special.

First question: am I the only person to have noticed that Take That's new single sounds exactly like Coldplay? Consider the evidence:



Also, that Mark can't stop wearing hats: which is celebrity shorthand for being bald.

Unexpectedly I totally loved the X Factor Take That special, mainly because it turns out that Take That songs are versatile / bland enough (delete according to inclination) to be adapted to any number of different styles, so everyone put in good performances, rather than the uncomfortable constipated karaoke that so often results. The other reasons were that they just seem so damn happy to be there, that I unexpectedly have a crush on Howard (I think: possibly Jason, one of ones who doesn't sing, anyway, and didn't take part in the rehearsal process because they have nothing to contribute), and also, after all the John Sergeant bitching, that it is quite refreshing to have a programme where all the contestants are fresh-faced ingenues that it is impossible to be horrible about, and the nastiness is mostly contained in the endless Simon-Louis war (Team Simon!). Oh, and in the results show, they had both Same Difference, recast as Sandy and Danny do High School Musical with BIG EXPRESSIVE FACES, *and* the singing albino robot butler Rhydian, performing their new singles.

Finally I watched Never Mind the Buzzcocks, in the course of which I discovered that Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics is a tosser (which I already knew) but knows it and doesn't care (which I didn't know, and makes me like him a whole lot better.)