Says it all, really. To put that headline in to perspective, 2006 is the year Leona Lewis won. Snooooze. The following year, Cowell added fourth judge Dannii Minogue to the judging panel - purely to evoke a typically rancid reaction from Sharon Osbourne.
Of Saturday's viewing figures, Digital Spy reports: "2012's first auditions show, featuring Mel B on the judging panel, was seen by 8.09m (39.4%) on ITV1 between 8pm and 9.15pm and 616k (2.9%) on +1. Despite the talent show topping the night by some distance - peaking with 9.2m in the last half hour - the average figure of 8.1m is down a hefty 2.7m year-on-year and is a far cry from the 12m launch audience of 2010... The Voice UK and Britain's Got Talent secured a higher audience and peak for their respective openers in March."
So, who to blame? Louis and the incessant parroting of his stock catchphrases ("You look like a popstar", "The public are gonna love you", "You made that song your own" etc). Should we instead blame Tulisa's charisma chasm, her vortex of style - or, as Lord Alan Sugar tweeted: "Can you tell me who the hell this Tulisa bird is on X Factor. What has she done?" (then again, he's always been a Cole advocate). How about Mel B's utter irrelevancy?
Nobody can say a thing wrong about Gary Barlow (except sometimes he tries too hard to be mean) so we'll just blame all of the above, and the fact that - after a decade - we are saturated to the point of sogginess with bleedin' talent shows. Enough already.
> X Factor's Pink impersonator being investigated by police.
