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She had tears in her eyes, but they were tears not of sorrow but defiance and anger. She managed to keep to the script that she had been given as the evening’s host put his arm around her, not so much to console but direct her. The other contestants were “awesome” and it had been an “amazing journey”. But in her eyes you could see she was telling us: this is wrong, this is a sham,

And so I stood in front of the TV with three fingers held in the air, partly in respect for Giftey, partly in response to the two fingered salute which the X Factor producers had given the nation.

Given the choice between someone who had genuine talent and an amazing voice Sharon Osborne chose to send Giftey home and keep a teenage group of interchangeable clones, who even the keenest eyed would fail to identify in a police line-up. Sharon, whose other job is gate announcer in the departure lounge for Hell, was only sticking to the script though.

Having pulled off one major outrage the soulless minons of the Dark Lord Cowell then spun the wheel to decide the theme for next week: what would it be? The wheel spun and settled eventually on – no, really? “Girl vs Boy Group”. What are the chances of that? How fortunate that there is a girl group still in the contest. Not since someone bought a job lot of Union flags just before the last Scottish Independence vote has anyone been so lucky.

Sensing the anger of the studio audience and indeed the nation, Simon did his best to deflect attention from the injustice that had just been done. “I blame myself” he said “It was the wrong song”. Half right Simon – it is your fault, it wasn’t the song. As totalitarian dictatorships throughout history have found, the best way to hide the truth is to wrap it in a lie. Gamely Simon, who normally displays all the emotions from smug to unbearably smug tried to look and sound, well, sad. I think it was meant to be sad.

Many people have written the X Factor off before – surely this is too much, too obviously manipulative. It’s been said before but clearly there are new depths that even the sponsors of Honey G have not yet imagined. I know what I think – it’s Halloween, get me my pitchfork and torch, let’s head off to Castle Cowell.