I Just Watched X Factor For The First Time In Nine Years - And Dear Lord, It Was Ugly

“X Factor died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can’t be sure.”

I haven’t watched The X Factor in nine years. Upon my return, the one thing I didn’t count on was how truly and surprisingly depressing it has become. This is due to the fact that literally NOTHING has changed in ten years.

NOTHING.

Dermot O’Leary is back. Sharon Osborne is back (unaged). Louis Walsh is back?! I feel like I’ve traveled through space and time to 2007 and have become stuck in a Donnie Darko-esque wormhole that envelops me for the whole two hours. This retro is not kitsch. This is worse than the hipster. Even this week is Motown week once again, for the one-billionth time. All the same songs. I’m happy X Factor still maintains that Motown should be sung and judged by a vast majority of white people.

Dear. God.

We begin our evening with a vaguely attractive blonde man (VABM) and somehow reach the network-supported blackface, Honey G's ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, and other classics are duly butchered. ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ is sung. I can only think about all the mountains that are high enough for this naive young lad who really believes he is on the cusp of fame. Louis liked it, he didn’t love it, and a chorus of boos erupt. People should give Louis a standing ovation for just being back on the show.

Here's Honey G doing Biggie Smalls.

Note: Louis is the heart, lungs and oesophagus of X Factor. Sharon Osborne is the wilting cabbage that’s still trying to show emotions through her face. Simon proves a perfect ad for Movember, seeming a lot happier with a beard and frankly, no one knows who Nicole Scherzinger is.

To get me through the talentless lot: a room of caring friends curated an exceptionally refined drinking game based on stereotypes so old that we don’t even find them funny anymore. The game eventually becomes a blatant coping mechanism and joviality turned to shame. I curse my editor for not assigning me Strictly Come Dancing. I drown my sorrows, then I drown them some more.

The fact of the matter is, I love reviewing crap TV shows. Reality TV is actually my thing. But the search for the UK Christmas Number 1 has just reached new levels of pathos through its own damned irrelevance, and the dramatic irony is rife. It’s Sophoclean at best. Our modern day Oedipus, Dermot O’Leary is dead behind the eyes.

His career once had potential. Remember those days?

No. Of course you don't. Nobody does any more.

I implore you, ITV, please... put X Factor (and myself) out of our goddamn misery.

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