Cheryl Cole vs Berlusconi

Hasn’t this world developed a funny sense of priority? There are all sorts of things happening around us; the question of whether Palestine will be allowed to join the UN, the stories on how the scandalous Berlusconi might finally be giving up his position of power and the continued rise of violence in good old Britain itself. But it is getting surprisingly hard to find all these things in the new ‘layout’ of today’s newspapers.

Since page 3 girls have long lost their factor of scandal, a new factor has completely overthrown the media: the X factor. But it isn’t just that show alone that particularly makes me want to throw yoghurt on anyone who is in control of how much ‘talent show contestants’ cover the pages. They seem to multiply, like cockroaches. And like any pest, no matter how hard you try to kill one down, another 3 will pop up from out of no-where.

Apparently to sell a newspaper today, you have to have at least 3 photos of some behind-the-scenes-scandal or a glimpse of someone’s knickers. To make this easier the producers have put them in a Big Brother style situation so that apart from competing with each other on stage, they will be living together so there will also be the possibility of romances, fights and all sorts of ‘interesting’ things that happen when you put youngsters in a show on TV.

I bet the creators of this horror show almost wet their skirts when they got the ‘yes’ on the opportunity for so much glamorous humiliation.

The Sun’s x-factor section (that’s right) recently released an article titled: “Frankie Cocozza fired for cocaine sex boasts: X Factor wildboy sacked”. In this article, the now infamous Mr Cocozza states “People seemed to like me, despite the fact I can’t sing — and now I’ve blown it. I’ll regret this the rest of my life.”  That pretty much sums it up for me. It’s not about the talent anymore, it’s about the gossip. Nobody seems to stand still by the fact that this boy is 18, that not only shouldn’t he be doing cocaine but that this guy obviously knows he can’t sing, that he is surprised that he is still in the race. His biggest regret isn’t ruining his life or future job opportunities by publicly exclaiming he took class-A drugs; it’s not being in the spotlights anymore.

To be fair, he did leave in quite a showbiz way.

But it is because of all this information that I personally find utterly useless that I’m less inclined to pick up the metro in the bus. I don’t watch these shows but I seem to be the only one in the country as this year’s opening show drew the attention of 11.1m viewers! To put into perspective: that is about twice the population of Scotland, or three times the amount of babies born per day. It’s a lot of people.

If I have to turn 15 pages of paparazzi shots and blown-up headlines to read an article of international importance, I just don’t think it’s worth it anymore. The media are complaining about the death of a newspaper, and I think that going about things the way they are, they are digging their own graves.

I honestly find it pathetic that the only way of introducing Silvio Berlusconi to the minds of our present society is to have Cher Lloyd, Cole or whatever Cher cover one of his songs, and quite frankly I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.