I'm enjoying the series, but I dislike Barlow and Tulisa.

Barlow because he made his name as a nice guy, but it turns out he's an arsehole.

Tulisa because all she knows how to do is make violin noises whilst waving her fingers like a conductor, yet she's judging others.

that Strictly is so much better!
(I've never seen X Factor)

It's down to bad casting of the judges. The contestants as a charming or as irritating as ever, except that I have never, ever, ever, ever felt as middle aged as I do when I see Frankie Cocozza (it's Italian for 'talentless little prick'.)

But I still have the results show on in the background as I type.

Well, they'd get one extra viewer - me.

The format needs refreshing. I think we're simply bored with seeing the same judges spats, the same remorseless hype and hyperbole, the same kinds of acts and the same boring choice of song. It's just a bore. A total bore.

still gets a hefty audience every Saturday and Sunday night. I think it depends if Cowell will let it decline and fade away if ratings continue to slide. Its had a few series now and its a tired old format so its not surprising people are getting bored.

I only watch the 15 minute results bit as it such great manipulative panto with its pauses, close ups and crash zooms.

Shallow talent pool, staged rows, gone off the judging panel.

But still watching.

"I know what the public likes", "You tick all the boxes", "Britain's new popstar!" Repeat ad infinitum. Funny how his acts never win. And how does he manage to turn the tears on at will?

In his defence, he never shirks a decision like others.

I actually like Barlow as a judge/mentor.

I prefer X Factor, during auditions when the contestants are fresh-faced, full of hope, giving it all, singing songs that they have loved for a long time. The live shows displays their raw talent having all the character and personality removed layer by layer, humiliation upon humiliation, until they are mere emotionless vessels for Syco's money-making machine.

You can see the format working if you watch the X Factor USA on ITV25, which includes Simon and LA Reid as the serious judges, and even the presence of Paula Abdul doesn;t lose it credibility.

Tulisa's naive and says things she shouldn't. Louis's still a performing seal, attempting to do the subtle banter with a vocal sledgehammer, Gary tries to do the Simon role but isn't really able to play the hardman well enough, and Beyonce's mate is lovely but not sure she's able to mentor well enough.

The contestants are poor quality this year - really don't want any to win... they need to remove Frankie (I need to wash after watching him), and hopefully salvage something from it. The poor little Irish girl, banned from doing Cranberries covers this week, was told she should stick to her roots but how she can do this on Half Man Half Biscuit Week's anyone's guess.

Hey ho, still watching though...

By Ben Elton. He's not the best writer in the world, but you will look at Pop Idol/X Factor in a different light afterwards.

there's no point watching.

It is remarkable how dramatic the lurch from passionate support to amnesia is for the viewer. As acts depart, they disappear from one's mind like the beam-me-up-Scotty scene in slow-mo.

Everyone who has ever wanted to be on it must have been auditioned by now. It should be given a rest until some new talent grows up and is eligible for it. I've given up on it this year - I didn't find any of the contestants to be worth hearing more than once.

She's not really got anything to say for herself, and she's about 12. Say what you like about Noted Violent Celebrity Racist Cheryl Kerl, at least she had a few years with a genuinely great girl group under her belt N-Dubz are an absolute joke: couldn't make a decent pop song to save their lives, and about as "hip-hop" as "Rock DJ". Neither fish nor fowl. Will disappear more thoroughly than B*Witched within a couple of years. So what's she doing there?

Not that the music's relevant - it's all just a soundtracked soap opera - but you do have to have people that actually have *some* pop credibility sitting behind the desk, in order to make the story work. I'm sure Tulisa's a lovely girl*, but she's too young and has no proven chops whatsoever. How's she supposed to play the svengali in a way that an audience can buy into?

Even Louis has two undeniable long-term successes to his name, although you sense that those were probably just luck (as well as being pretty much the worst thing ever to happen to chart pop).

(*I'm not)

Http://stevebrookstein.blogspot.com makes for interesting reading if you've been following X-Factor at all this year. He comes across as a bit ranty but makes some good points - particularly about the portrayal of 'sleazy pole dancing Kitty' by Syco-sponsored tabloids, contrasted with the promotion of cheeky arse-tattooed Frankie (who apparently has family connections to Take That). And, like Steve, I also find the oft-used insult 'you sounded like a cruise ship / wedding singer' massively insulting to anyone who makes a living that way, given the appalling standard of (most of) this year's crop.

I don't yet have to watch X-Factor and given the choice I never will but with 2 daughters I suspect it will happen one day, and if not X-Factor then some other equivalent "reality product".

The odd times I have watched it I've found it simultaneously ludicrous, dull and spiteful. Its format appears to be an attempt to distil the essence of the contrived and ham-fisted mating processes that are played out all round the country in city centre nightclubs at around 1.30am with the only concession to preventing a glassing or a random beating being the absence of alcohol and the invasive presence of ITV-sponsored CCTV cameras everywhere. I understand its appeal.

Despite this understanding I can't actually see a difference in intent between X-Factor and something like The Jeremy Kyle Show other than that the latter doesn't include celebrities pretending to be common people in order to deflect our attention away from the cold, heartless animus at the core of the programme. I'd love to be able to disengage my instinctive repulsion and take on X-Factor as a piece of harmless light entertainment but to me it is anything but. It is so darkly manipulative it manages to obscure its inherent tiresomeness and absence of genuine warmth by coating everything in a sheen of surface empathy and misplaced jocularity. For once Herbert Morrison's oft-repeated phrase can be applied without irony or ridicule: oh, the humanity!

Perhaps the lack of humanity, or more specifically the lack of ability to display any humanity, is why the current series is failing; the TV audience has broken through the surface sheen because there is such a chronic lack of personality in the judges, a total absence of empathy from the people who were previously relied upon to assuage any nagging doubts in the viewer's mind about what the show really represented under all that loud and frenetic editing and stage-managed vignettes purporting to show "The Real Me".

I watched Gary and Tulisa the other week and all I saw were a pair of soulless vacuums where personalities with affinity should reside. They're like a pair of recently divorced Stepford Wives who have attempted to find rehabilitation in society by becoming panel judges. At least with Simon Cowell there was a genuine pantomime villain with a sufficient number of facial tics and eye-brow manoeuvres to help the viewer forget their self-doubts and focus their (self)loathing onto someone else but Gary and Tulisa are so void of emotion and empathy the viewer no longer has sufficient cover under which they can hide their lingering doubts about their own collusive role in the nasty freak-show. I realise this is probably wish-fulfilment on my part.

I strongly suspect that the reason I avoid X-Factor is because I would quickly disassemble under the barrage of noise and cruelty and reconstruct myself as part of the baying mob whilst still pretending to myself to be detached from the entire process through having the advantage of a well-developed sense of irony. I've seen it happen to friends who watch the show avidly. Initially they start as detached and knowing viewers and remain that way for the most part but, on cue, they'll come to life and punctuate their ironic catatonia with a burst of aggressive emotional energy as soon as there's a whiff of fear or incompetence from any of the simulacrum of talent on screen. My self-conscious detachment from the show as I watch them instead of the spectacle on screen is always peppered with a sense of guilt; my own voyeurism is, essentially, no different to theirs so any allusions of my somehow being superior-minded are comprehensively dispelled and disproved on the spot. I make no apologies for being a snob about X-Factor because I realise the contradictions in play by my taking that stance.

There's a scene in the film Betty Blue where Zorg resists Annie's desperate sexual advances by telling her he has to decline her offer in order to remind himself that he has free-will and is capable of resisting temptation. That seems to be my approach to X-Factor and all the other "audience participation/reality/real life" fodder that clogs up the schedules. I genuinely believe they represent the worst possible form of television format and that their prevalence and dominance as a format is depriving us all of exposure to real creative talent and of positive communal cultural experiences that used to enlighten us each and every Saturday night under the surface sheen of light entertainment.

If the shark has jumped on the X-Factor I honestly hope it comes back and bites off all that it chew.

booted Cocozza off! Whither Rock now?

"septum with bugle"

The BBC are pouring a lot of money into "The Voice" for next year, a format that's been huge in Holland and the US, the big selling-point of which is the fact that the auditions take place with the judges' backs to the stage (it's all about "The Voice" - geddit??), so for those (like me) who hate the early freakshow rounds of X-Factor and Idol, this is a total godsend, though in most other respects, it follows the X-Factor/Idol template.

The US mentors (not judges) were Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green, Adam Levine (Maroon 5), and Blake Shelton (unknown-to-me country megastar, who actually turned out to be the best of the bunch), so no-one could say they didn't know what they were talking about, and the overall vibe is very upbeat and supportive, with the mentors (seemingly) spending a lot of time with their teams.

The only mentor confirmed for the BBC's UK version so far is Jessie J, but other names on the rumour mill include Tom Jones, Will Young and Mark Owen (Take That.) It'll all come down to the casting of course, but I'm cautiously optimistic...

The problem with X Factor is the corrosive effect it has had on pop music at all levels.

I recently turned up at a local open mic and sat down with my guitar and played a few songs. Following me was a young girl who announced "this is the acoustic version" before pressing play on her ipod which provided the accompaniment to what can only be described as three minutes of strident power ballad screeching.

I felt like informing her that the dictionary defines "acoustic" as "of, pertaining to, or being a musical instrument whose sound is not electrically enhanced or modified".