Strictly Career Reincarnation

Pretty much everyone agrees that television is crap nowadays. The BBC takes more money than ever from us using the archaic TV license but all they ever produce is more and more far fetched storylines in Eastenders and crap programmes featuring holier-than-thou bender John Barrowman.

Meanwhile Channel 4 and ITV have been raking it in with these annoying phone in competitions: the ones they got caught using to rip viewers off. Following Pop Idol and discounting Big Brother, X Factor was the leader in the phone voting shows and is actually enjoyable to watch due to the fact that usually one or two of them can sing and obviously Simon Cowell's trademark patronising put-downs that have earned him significantly more money than discovering Curiosity Killed the Cat.

You can almost let them off the fact that X Factor is a pointless charade to milk money from the general public by selecting contestants not based on their vocal quality but to ensure that most types of viewer are catered for and can find someone they like and will vote for throughout the series. I'd do it. But Louis Walsh always spews that it's a talent competition and I completely disagree with that.

Look at the judges. Simon Cowell apart, you have Louis Walsh who manufactured two boy bands. And that's it. Sharon Osbourne that did what exactly? Married a rocker and got pissed a lot? Finally you have the eye candy that is Danni Minogue. But how can she give an opinion on anything closely relating to talent?

Take the last X Factor which Leon Jackson won. Personally I thought Niki and Beverley were better than him and I thought the final was a farce because it was decided more on social status than on vocal talent and so-called X Factor. The fact is, Rhydian looked a bit weird, was not given songs that his voice worked well with and is a middle class, rugger-playing public schoolboy. Furthermore when it came to the last half an hour or so of voting, Dermot O'Leary bleated that there was only 2% between the two singers: at which point a sob story video clip was played where Jackson was saying how he lives in a council house and was doing it all to give his mum a better life. Cue tears and sympathy votes resulting in Jacko winning it and banking the million quid recording deal.

ITV also sports I'm a Tosspot, get me a Career now and again starring overpaid Geordie duo PJ & Duncan, of "Watch us wreck the mic.. psyche!" fame as the presenters. To be fair they are decent hosts and make an incredibly boring show of unknown Z-listers slightly more interesting. For those that don't know, Tosspot is a show where ITV digs up Z-list celebrities (most of whom you haven't heard of), pays them 80 grand each and puts them in a camp in the Australian outback.

They do various stupid tasks such as eating live insects or riding a motorbike across a small plank of wood that crosses a ravine to earn bonuses which are mainly booze and fags. It's basically like Big Brother except it doesn't go on for as long, it's in the jungle and it has less attractive contestants.

The first winner of Tosspot was Tony Blackburn, the radio broadcaster whose only previous television outings had been cameos on Noel's House Party. Since then his career has ballooned. He now presents competitions on GMTV and recently did a collaboration with The Wurzels.

The BBC have jumped on the phone-voting bandwagon with How do you Solve a Problem like Maria? where viewers voted for the lead in Lloyd Webber's production of The Sound of Music; Any Dream Will Do where viewers voted for the lead in Lloyd Webber's production of Joseph and soon to be Oliver - where viewers will - you guessed it - vote for the lead in Lloyd Webber's upcoming production. Unsurprisingly the Beeb have also used Barrowman extensively in these as well.

This brings me to the latest "surreality" show on ITV. Well, the latest permutation of the generic phone voting format. Dancing on Ice.

Usually on I'm a Tosspot you have heard of some of the celebrities but for this Strictly Come Dancing spinoff ITV have delved even deeper into the mire of jobless Z-listers and have come up with... Greg Rusedski! He makes Peter Crouch look like Justin Timberlake and his dancing partner sounds like she's just inhaled an entire helium balloon.

Add on world famous superstars such as Linda Lusardi: famous for getting her tits out in the paper 32 years ago and being a panelist on Win, Lose or Draw in the mid 1990's and Suzanne Shaw, known from being in the failed manufactured band Hear'Say that sold 3 covers and split up you have a cracking line up. I could go on. All these non-entities are topped off by the constant presence of Jayne Torvill & Chris Dean; the former looking like she's just been taken out of an oven pre-set at 350 degrees.

The show is hosted by the former Childrens' BBC presenter Philip Schofield whose contrasting grey hair, perma-tan and fixed dark-eyed stare makes you think twice about switching off in case he comes after you. I used to watch Phil when he did Going Live and the broom cupboard with Gordon the Gopher but he's a bizarrely scary caricature now.

How far are these TV companies going to dig into that Z-list to fill the ranks of their latest reality show? Why don't they get people that we know, rather than bit-part actors or sports people whose careers are over? Why is it always people that want to launch or relaunch their career? Why is it made out to be a talent contest, when in the end it really doesn't matter who wins because they all get paid a fortune and unlike the singing shows they don't then go on to be world class ice skaters or dancers. Why are they even called reality shows when they are about as far from it as Pluto is to the Sun.

One of the reasons I like X Factor is that I feel like I know the judges. Walsh. Manager of West Life. Cowell. Twat. Osbourne. Plastic piss artist. Dead easy, right? But on these dancing shows they pack the judging panel with yet more unknowns. They have some old bloke called Len that always gives high scores to the female contestants. Then there's the token "oh la la" French bloke that comes out with superlatives. Token Aussie that is a bastard and votes everyone down "because thats what he does". A wannabe Simon Cowell but with more aggression than articulation. The rest of the judges are even more unknown than the contestants. Bonza!

But still the lemmings continue to find people to support in generation after regurgitated generation of these shows and the television companies continue to make millions from the phone voting every week. Perhaps I am too cynical, but when I see these shows such as Britain Hasn't Got Any Talent Except for a Fat Opera Singer it makes me want to cry both at the exploitation of the public and the desperation of the contestants.

ITV has another so-called talent show running at the moment called The One and Only. The format is predictable: farm up some nobodies from the cabaret circuit, think of a sizeable carrot to make the show seem "important" (in this case it's a contract doing a show in Las Vegas) and then exploit their lack of talent for several weeks, making millions from phone voting in the process. Complete this package with an uninspiring judging panel comprising of David and Carrie Grant as well as camp Graham "I've done loads of drugs" Norton presenting it.

That summary may sound a little harsh, but the furniture are the least of the show's worries. ITV bosses should look at the so-called talent on display and really wonder whether they should have axed this show before it began. First of all only one of the contestants can even remotely sing, and thats the Tom Jones one but he can't dance and he looks like his beard has been drawn on with a wax crayon. My mother told me I should watch it because the Britney Spears is really good. So I did, and she was terrible. Apparently she's a copper. Exciting.

At least on X Factor they tell the contestants when they sing out of tune or can't dance but on The One and Only the Grants try not to put the contestants down. Sorry but thats just dull. I can't actually imagine any of the contestants being any good in Las Vegas. I'm sure there are plenty of Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra acts in Vegas without ITV tossing another one in there that on a talent scale of 1 to 10 has about -25.

What is it going to take for the public to say enough is enough? The shows will only stop when people stop voting, but it drives me mad that instead of making original funny or interesting programmes they spew out more and more of these phone voting shows. But Britain has a well-known culture of loving the underdog and supporting their chosen act until the end: being voted out or winning. Furthermore I believe a huge chunk of the audience of these shows wishes they were doing it.

The depths of standards that people will reduce themselves to in order to hopefully gain fame and fortune are quite, quite low. I went into work last weekend and I saw the queues for the Britain Hasn't Got Any Talent auditions they were recording: there were thousands of people queueing round the block from the Winter Gardens. They were all wielding their little scripts of whatever they were going to perform for judges Simon Cowell (he gets around doesn't he?), Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan.

As a slight interjection, what has Amanda Holden done that qualifies her as a judge on a talent contest? She's only famous for posing in lads' mags and divorcing Les Dennis. She must be getting on a bit now too.

Anyway what made me laugh most about these people, though, was that it was absolutely hammering it down with rain and these mugs were stood there with almost no chance of being the star they so desire to be. When I walked back to my car I had quite a poignant view. On one hand, along the street there were the thousands of hopefuls. On the other, about 30 metres away from them in a car park below mine and hidden away down an alley was Simon Cowell's £300,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom.

So near, yet so far.