Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)

Perhaps I'm looking back at Saturday night telly with slightly too much of a nostalgic view, but is it just me or is it simply unbearably shit these days?

Unfortunate enough to have to fill in time between yesterday's thumping and a rather more enjoyable party in Camden, TV was my only available solace. And what a treat I had in store.

My background entertainment for the evening consisted of X Factor, something I've happily managed to avoid from the moment of being single. I'm not looking through rose-tinted spectacles here, but previous memories of such programming revolved around the often heartwarming stories of the performers involved.

The days of loveable serial stammerer Gareth Gates, powerfully voiced but cake addicted Rick Waller, and equally weight-troubled warbler Michelle McManus (who possibly ate Rick - has anyone seen him since?) have now become a sideshow.

The previous Popstars/Pop Idol format was fundamentally different in the respect that it was all about the collaborative production of untapped talent. This allowed the viewer to focus on the individual artists themselves, appreciate their backgrounds, and see their progression throughout the show.

X Factor made a drastic change by making individual judges totally responsible for the development of participants. With a vested interest involved and egos at stake, the show is no longer about the performance - it's about the judges. I didn't have a stopwatch to hand, but I'm sure that between them Louis Walsh, Sharon Osbourne, Danni Minougue and Simon Cowell had more collective airtime than any of the acts involved.

What transpires after each performance is nothing other than woeful one-upmanship in the form of a human bearpit, which would make an argument in an infant school playground appear civilised. Each 'judge' tries to outdo the other with pathetic reasons for why their act is 'better', and why the poor plasticised on-stage drones don't deserve to go through. At one point Walsh practically blamed the mere existence of one act for eliminating his the previous week. Who would have thought the act of human respiration could be such a heinous crime.

What conclusions can we raise from quality programming like this? For one, the judges clearly have nothing but contempt for the acts they supposedly 'mentor', showing only callous disdain for any rival in the show. Shouldn't these bastions of industry be lending the helping hand of experience to all participants? It seems the acts aren't there for the record-buying public, they exist only as a vehicle to support the judges' own egotistic absurdity.

This isn't about the best act winning, or even nurturing of raw talent - it's pure balls-on-the-table, plaintive machismo. Osbourne and Minougue are prepared to show testosterone levels that would make a scientist doubt their chromosome makeup - a fact made more disturbing when it's Danni we're talking about.

Surely we are only one step away from 'Judge Factor' - a show in which the public vote to keep on the judge that proves themselves to be the biggest, most cantankerous piss-streak in existence each week.

After all, if the ratings stay as they are it serves only to prove that this dreadful simmering shitfest exists purely to satisfy our own sick delight in sadistic suffering.