Considering that I am not a fan of TV talent shows like “Britain’s Got Talent” or “The X Factor” it comes as a surprise to me to be able to report that last Sunday I went to Wembley Arena to watch a recording of “The X Factor: Boot Camp” and actually rather enjoyed it.
The day did not start particularly auspiciously. Engineering
work on the railway and underground meant that the routes I would normally have
chosen were not an option and so it came as a surprise to me that the journey
took only seventy five minutes; considerably less than I expected. We (that’s
my younger daughter and I, for it is she who is really the X Factor fan)
arrived at Wembley at 8.45 and joined the queue, which was perhaps not as long
as one might expect. Perhaps the appeal of shows like this is waning. The
ticket that had been emailed to me said “Doors open 9 am, doors close 10.30am”
so I expected to be in the arena by about eleven o’clock and for recording to
start at about mid-day. Here I was wildly optimistic. The queue we were in was
to exchange our e-tickets for “proper” ones and when we were given these we
were told to go away and come back at 12.30, three hours hence!
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| The Bobby Moore Statute - Plenty of time to take in the sights. |
This was a bit of a surprise, so we wandered off in search
of breakfast in the company of a great many Manchester United fans (and a few
from Wigan) who were arriving for the FA Community Shield match. Now I like to
arrive in good time for things, but these people were at Wembley five hours
before kick-off, which even to me seems somewhat excessive. The queue at
McDonalds was huge, so we gave that up as a bad job and found a catering wagon
where the bacon roll and cup of tea were surprisingly good; unsurprisingly
overpriced. Given the limited options available to the randomly gluten intolerant
one (me, see my blog “My Intolerance”), I had to risk a normal bread roll for
my bacon and am happy to report no unfavourable outcome. With three hours to
kill we wandered around the stadium perimeter, had another cup of tea and
eventually twelve-thirty arrived.
Unsurprisingly, even after taking our seats by one o’clock,
it was a further hour before proceedings began and the judges, Nicole Scherzinger,
Gary Barlow, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh were introduced. Now not being a
fan of X Factor, I have no idea how this Boot Camp thing normally works, but
apparently this year there is a bit of a departure from the norm, with the
contestants who have passed the previous auditions being whittled down to the
last six by their mentor in front of the live audience, who have some input in
the choice by how much appreciation they show to each performance. Once six
acts have been chosen, and there are six uncomfortable looking white chairs at
the side of the stage for these lucky contestants, the remaining performers can
usurp one of the occupants if the judges, with a little help from the audience
if you believe the hype, think they are more worthy of a place. All this
creates a little extra drama, a bit more pathos for some, a bit more joy for
others.
In his book “Chart Throb”, Ben Elton classified contestants
in shows like X Factor as Clingers, Mingers, Blingers and Singers[1].
This being Boot Camp, the wheat had been sorted from the chaff in previous
auditions, so the acts we saw were, by and large, pretty good, i.e. “singers.”
But it wouldn’t make good television for a talent show to be based on talent
alone, and there were glimpses that at least two of the contestants who made it
through Boot Camp have enough “history” to fall potentially into the “clingers”
category.
By no means was the music to my taste; I’m a man in his
middle fifties who likes prog rock for God’s sake, so the type of music on show,
with a couple of exceptions, was hardly likely to feature in my CD collection.
Nonetheless apart from one or maybe two them, these girls (and the oldest of
them was about twenty-one) could really sing, even if they did largely inhabit
that style which exaggerates and (to my ear) mangles even quite simple pieces. Particularly impressive though, was the
rendition of the Etta James song, “I’d Rather Go Blind.” Mind you, they were all better at singing
than they were at articulating why they, rather than anyone else, should
progress to the next stage of the competition. They all came out with the same
banal reasons why they should be chosen; “destiny,” “music is my life,” “I
deserve this,” were all trotted out. No one had the honesty to say, “I want the
fame and fortune and I’m a good enough singer” but perhaps I am being harsh on
what was a group of principally teenage girls standing in front of four
thousand people and being asked to boast. Since this year’s X Factor hasn’t
started on TV yet, the audience was asked not to reveal the names of the
successful Boot Camp contestants on Twitter or Facebook, or the like: no great
hardship for me since I can’t remember any of their names.
If the contestant’s comments were trite, then the judge’s
remarks were even more predictable. “You really nailed it,” and “You owned that
song” were uttered with tedious regularity, even when it wasn’t strictly true.
Sharon Osbourne called everyone “missus” (obviously not good with names), Louis
Walsh was surprisingly meek and Gary Barlow was kind and generally helpful with
his comments. Probably because it was her group of contestants, Nicole Scherzinger
rather over-egged the pudding, extracting every ounce of emotion from her deliberations
over which contestant to save, which one to send home, but hey this is
television so what should I have expected?
What I possibly didn’t expect though, and was pleasantly
surprised by, was that the observations from the judges were uniformly kind.
Even where a performance wasn’t quite up to scratch the criticism was
constructive; no one went away in tears because of the harshness of the
comments, even if those who were sent away were probably sobbing gently as they
left the stage.
So, did my Sunday at Wembley convert me into an X Factor
fan? Well, no actually not quite, but it was fun for an afternoon and I suppose
that I may just take a peek at this year’s series, just to see how the
contestants I saw get on, you understand.
[1]
Clingers - the 'needy' ones with a tear-jerking back-story
Mingers - those uttterly desperate, there to be made
fun of
Blingers - those convinced of their own greatness - of
'Destiny'
Singers - those able to perform, but really need to be
CMBs too in order to get through to the show itself.
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