The Day I Saw The X Factor Auditions

Had a team conference at the O2 this week. As I walked towards the Dome entrance, I couldn’t help but notice a queue of tens of thousands of people. I say ‘people’, what I really mean is ‘freaks’. Multicoloured mohawks, semi-naked girls, people holding banners saying things like ‘Gary Barlow, will you marry me?’ Turns out we had booked our team meeting on the same day as the first round of the X Factor auditions.

The good news was that our meeting room was fairly well soundproofed, so the loud music, the terrible singing and the screaming audience weren’t too much of a problem. The bad news was that we had to share our toilet with the auditionees.

Walking into the toilets was like walking into a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One guy was pacing around the toilets talking to himself (probably reciting his sob story); another was studying himself in the mirror, holding an imaginary microphone and singing the same line over and over again; one guy was being sick in the urinal; and one guy was even washing his mouth out with hand soap! Completely normal!

I do love the X Factor – mainly because of how seriously it’s taken in this country. You have 12-year-old girls saying things like, ‘I’ve been dreaming about this moment my whole life’. And the sob stories get more and more extravagant each year. Back in the Steve Brookstein days, it was things like, ‘I was bullied in school’. Nowadays, it’s things like, ‘my great great grandma’s dying wish was for me to audition for the X Factor’. To be honest, love, I think it’s more likely that your great grandma’s dying wish was for a large dose of morphine.

My favourite though, is when a contestant is voted off of the live show. ‘I promise you haven’t seen the last of me!’ he or she will cry out in a final desperate bid to hold onto the last iota of their quickly diminishing fame. Of course they’re never seen again, except for perhaps a brief appearance on Big Brother or the Eurovision Song Contest – or both, in Jedward’s case.

Oh yeah, the meeting! It was all going very well until we had to break off into smaller groups for a bit of brainstorming. Our group went into the cafeteria area, which at first was nice and quiet. However, a few of the auditionees had also discovered that the cafeteria was nice and quiet. So our brainstorm session was constantly interrupted by a girl singing ‘Tonight, I’ll be a naughty girl’.

At the end of the meeting we managed to sneak into the arena and watch a bit of the X Factor auditions being filmed. Well, to be more accurate, all we had time to see was the warm-up act – the world’s most unfunny comedian failing to make even one of the ten thousand people in the audience laugh.

Got home and felt really rough. I’m not sure if it was because of the muggy weather or just overexposure to X Factor contestants. For some unknown reason, I had a craving to use a face pack. Had a little rummage around my mum’s toiletries but couldn’t find anything. Of course, I managed to find something in Jake’s toiletries though – a large pack of Dead Sea mud.

‘This looks quite good’, I thought. I had a quick browse of the instructions on the back. It said that I had to use the whole pack at once or it would dry out. The thing is, I only wanted to put a little bit on my face. It seemed such a waste to throw away all of that Dead Sea mud, so I slathered it over my entire body.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous. What really bothered me, however, was that I was beginning to smell like rotten egg. I quickly grabbed the empty mudpack from the bin. I started wondering if it could have been out of date, but then realised that the mud is probably thousands of years old anyway.

I looked to see if there were any warnings or side effects written on the pack. ‘May cause minor skin irritation’, ‘Keep product away from eyes’ – the usual stuff. Nothing about smelling of poo then. I didn’t want to leave the mud on for a second longer. I jumped in the shower and washed it all off.

Got out the shower and into bed. I felt much better. Clean, soft skin, and only the faintest aroma of rotten egg emanating from my pores.

Happy Jubilee Weekend!