Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting

I haven't pitched in much about the annual Saturday talent show battle between the fun and classy Strictly Come Dancing, and the tacky but nevertheless entertaining The X Factor this year. Firstly, I wanna say how fucking annoying it is that they have to compete with each other over ratings -- my fingers hurt from constantly flicking between the two. I find this particularly difficult to understand given that Strictly has proven to be the more popular of the two. ITV are much more geared towards competition, and so it seems odd that they are doing themselves a grave disservice in pursuing a battle with BBC. Although, there's a difference of an hour between the start of each programme tonight, so they may be finally starting to take the hint.

So.. I suddenly feel obliged to throw in my two cents, given the scandalous (and admittedly juicy) events of the past week. I'll start with The X Factor, which is a shamelessly commercial and manipulative venture that, let's face it, represents ITV's approach to programming very well. Having said that my curiosity and general inability to ignore music reality shows means I'm already hooked -- especially for my looovely Rhydian (but I'll get onto that later).

So onto the scandal. It turns out that Emily, a contestant who constantly weeped on camera about nearly dying (she had organ failure and her heart stopped beating for a couple of seconds, or something?) is quite up for a good ol' scrap. There is video coverage of her attacking a girl in the ever-growing aspect of youth culture deemed 'happy slapping' (which basically means bullying on camera). Her parents were so incensed that they withdrew her from the competition (nothing to do with the producers I'm sure). All laughing aside, I think it's a fairly grounding situation for the show that I sincerely hope leads them to evaluate the extent to which they build their contestants up as saints -- whether they be single parents, grief-stricken relatives, or any other alleged victim of which there are plenty NOT on television.

All this makes the layout of eliminations throughout the series uncertain but apparently there will still be one tonight. I'll post my verdicts on the performers after tonight's show, and of course reactions to results, which have tended to be more comprehensible on Simon Cowell's show than they are on rival show Strictly Come Dancing.

Strictly's results storm last week, which ended in presenter Gabby Logan being eliminated from the show, despite coming in the top half of scoring has provoked a lot of response. Even more perplexing is that the other couple in the bottom two (Penny Lancaster-Stewart and her partner Ian) had more points than Gabby and her partner. It makes you wonder if this is a dancing competition or a popularity contest. Kate Garraway, who stuck her oar in midweek with a defence of the public, has been the main winner from this, coming bottom of the scoring in the last two weeks but not in the bottom two after the audience had their say. Still, this surely can't go on for much longer. The hopeless Garraway is hardly the most famous of the celebrities taking part.

Again, I'll be giving my opinions on all the dances (not that I'm an expert on dancing or anything) later tonight. Needless to say my favourite is the model-cum-actress (I say 'actress' loosely) and one of my "I so would if I was even vaguely attracted to girls" girls, the gorgeous Kelly Brook.

Anyway, that's enough from me. Enjoy the saturday night's entertainment ... and remember. Keeeeeep dancing!