Last night saw Cher Lloyd leaving the X-Factor and with her went the last vestige of "factor X".  Tonight's final will now be a snoozefest between three acts that are about as authentic as Santa's red outfit.  Sure Rebecca and Matt are talented but I've seen marbles with more edge than them.  My lasting image of Matt is him clasping his hands together and kissing them in mock humility.  It's possibly the most affected thing I've seen in my life and just makes me want to beat him over the head. Seeing him next to Rhianna on stage just highlighted his lack of stature (literally and metaphorically). 

If Rebecca wins (and I believe she is a hair's breadth in front of One Direction in the voting) her single will need to carry a warning not to play it while driving or operating heavy machinery.  Dear God, does she ever *do* anything?  I don't think I can recall a single one of her songs – they just blend together in memory, lost in a Xanax haze.

OK, I am probably not the demographic that the X-factor is targeting and normally I ignore it completely.  But this year there seemed to be the hint of something different, a tantalising possibility that even the great Puppet Master Simon Cowell had realised his clones were getting boring.  The stand-out moment of this series for me was Aidan Grimshaw singing Mad World (and it takes a lot for me to admit that publicly!) which literally stopped me in my tracks when I heard it.  Also Cher and Katie had a palpable "something different" (and I don't just mean Katie's entrepreneurial grandmother).  Collectively these three smelled like Teen Spirit but x-factor voters appear to have been brainwashed into being old farts from their pre-teens so gradually the wheat has been whittled out and the chaff remains so whoever wins tonight an anodyne anti-perspirant will be the result.