Charlie Brooker is my Hero.

Try as i might to not watch the X-Factor, it just seems that with EoghinMania(tm) running wild that i have to deal with ill informed 13 year olds explain to me why he is the best thing since sliced bread. Leave it to good old Brooker to sum him up in perfect fashion .


It's Eoghan Quigg. Eoghan Quigg. That's not a name, that's a Countdown Conundrum. It looks like what happens when you hastily type a URL with your fingers over the wrong keys. If they still allowed text voting, he'd have been out weeks ago.

Or maybe not. Because the moment Eoghan bounds on stage, he triggers a dormant maternal instinct in millions of grandmas up and down the nation, enough to overcome any spelling barrier. Last week an elderly neighbour aahhed herself to death halfway through his performance of Anytime You Need a Friend. Because Eoghan's got a baby face. And I mean that literally, as in someone's grafted a baby's face on to the front of his head. Tiny
little eyes and a ruby-red mouth. He's like a cross between the Test Card clown and a crayon portrait of Jamie Oliver. Weird. Eerie. Like the spectral figure of an infant chimney sweep that suddenly appears in an upstairs window, gazing sadly at your back as you walk the grounds of a remote country mansion on a silent Christmas afternoon; alerted by an indefinable chill, you turn and, for the briefest moment, his wet, sorry eyes meet yours... and then he's gone.

That's Eoghan, the ghost of X Factor present. Even if he gets voted out, I'm frightened I'll still spot him intermittently in the dead of night, popping up on screen during old black-and-white films, pleading through the glass like a kitten in a microwave. Swear to God, if he's not gone by New Year's Eve I'm having my television exorcised by a priest.

Perfect.

While were on the subject , why has no one pointed out how much he looks like wee Jimmy Krankie? A point that would be better illustrated if i could find a decent fucking picture of him.