Our time is running out...

It’s the end. Now, I know I’ve been wrong about this before but this time it’s definitely on. Armageddon is coming so get thee to Tesco and stock up on tinned foods and sporting goods. All the portents are there. The world is going stark raving crackers.

Let’s review the evidence; the Tories are leading opinion polls by the greatest margin for fifteen years; the new coach of the English football team doesn’t speak a word of it, unleaded is now £1.05 a litre round the corner and The Eagles have got back together. Most damning of all? Leon Jackson has won The X Factor 2007. I fully expect cats and dogs to start living together and Sunny Delight to rain down from the heavens within the next fortnight.

Of course, the thing I’m most distressed about is being forced to reveal my secret shame. Yes, I do watch The X Factor. I’ve illicitly watched it for years without feeling the need to speak about it in public but this time the great British idiotbox slaves have really gone too far. Ok, so Shayne Ward looked like someone queueing at Halfords but at least he had a good voice, and charisma. Nobody could argue that Leona (keep Bleedin’) Lewis doesn’t have some mighty lungs and every chance of a credible career ahead of her. Whoever won the first series was probably at least tolerable as well. But Leon bloody Jackson? A scrutty zig-zag of flesh with a total inability to carry a note and all the dancing skills of someone undergoing electroconvulsive therapy? I ask you.

Week after week I’ve watched amazed as competitors with some slender fibre of talent or who at least look like they might be enjoying themselves get voted off while Leon sodding Jackson jerks around the stage as if forced onto it with a cattle-prod. I’d more or less accepted that my personal favourites, the energetic, if unsettling, Same Difference, were unlikely to win last night. That’s ok. They’ve not given a poor performance throughout the series and seem the most professional act The X Factor has ever seen. They made it to their well deserved place in the final and that’s what matters. But are we seriously to believe that Leon fricking Jackson has more talent, charisma and potential than the mighty Rhydian? The Aryan voice meister could dismember that Scottish shoelace with a tiny toot of his tenor. The results show ended with it’s contestants and presenter seeming every part as stunned as I was. Leon, when pressed for a comment, could only mumble ‘Thanks’. Don’t thank me Leon, thank the viewers who thought you had more star quality than your fellow contestants. Apparently Ladbrokes describe it as ‘the biggest shock in the history of reality TV betting.’ They know about these things.

I suppose it’s some consolation that in five years or so when Same Difference are looking back on at least a couple of hit singles and Rhydian Roberts is in his latest smash hit West End musical the winner of The X Factor 2007 will almost certainly be back in his West Lothian mining town where he belongs. Not that I’ve anything against him, he’s won and good luck to him. He seems like a nice lad and I’m sure his mother is very proud. It’s just that I’d understood it was a talent competition and so far as I saw he was outclassed not just by the other two finalists but by the vast majority of this years competitors.

Apparently the voting public felt differently, but if polls are to be believed they also trust the Conservatives and want to bring back the death penalty. Mark my words, the breakdown of society is just a heartbeat away.