For crying out loud, let's make it the Ex-Factor

Didn't X Factor plunge to new depths at the weekend?

In a bid to harden up a somewhat tired format, producers introduced yet another level of degradation.

With the laughing stock acts behind us, and to be honest, they’re what make the show, not the half-decent sound-alike kids who blur into one by week five, we now have new ways of jangling the nerves of the young wannabes.

And how do we do that? By knowing they're not good enough but letting them think they are for a moment before jumping out with a “surprise”, you’re going home after all!

And worse, we make them sit on the stage in front of everyone while they watch the other acts do them out of a spot right in front of their teary eyes.

And this after the judges with their “will-we, won’t we” clichés have kept them dangling with lines such as “I’m really not sure about you,” followed by (even worse) “I’m sorry, but I'm afraid (pause, solemn shake of the head) “you're (beaming smile) . . . in my top six!”

Tears of joy on stage, usually the kind that precede severe palpitations and the need for oxygen, are matched by scenes of sheer despair from the chairs as the realisation dawns that the fat boy who’s just shown himself to be much, much better than you may just be taking your place.

One that was told to her face was the hapless young thing who was urged at the audition to drop her pals and go solo, only to have then shun her before the judges finally didnjust that. She staggered off the stage telling host Dermot O'Leary: "I've lost everything."

It’s been compared to the Suzanne Collins novel The Hunger Games in which children are forced to battle each other to the death. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, it’s more the Crying Game, or a snuffle movie, perhaps.

We’ve built a society that holds celebrity far higher than anything else to which most of these very ordinary shelf-stackers and rubbish sweepers can aspire.

Either way, reality TV will never wise up to reality. How long before we read tabloid stories of breakdown and serious self harm? There are column inches a plenty to come in this. Just not sure they're the ones we want.

Enough. It’s become a turn off. I suggest we do just that.