Double X-Factor genius

Saturday night’s X-Factor was a beautiful exercise in pure prime-time panto heaven. It had everything – big bad Cowell heaping scorn on the glaringly sub-par performances, pop pixie Cheryl in tears being comforted by a prepubescent Welsh child, Louis completely un-notable by his absence, Danni almost managing to register emotion, Whitney Houston cracked up to the eyeballs…the list goes on.

But the undoubted highlight was the showstopping performance by John and Edward, two of the most obnoxious little upstarts ever to sully the face of this planet.

With hair modeled on a combination of Johnny Bravo and Vanilla Ice, and outfits that could curdle milk, they tackled Oops I Did It Again with a curious combination of arrhythmical dancing and tone-deaf singing. Quite how a pair of twins can display such a total lack of understanding of each other is baffling. But in so doing, managed to completely redefine the phrase, car crash entertainment.

It was in equal parts hideous, hysterical, irreproachable and unfathomable. It was unbridled genius. It was unmissable. It was everything Saturday night TV should be. As Pop Justice described it, it was the moment that light entertainment died, was reborn then ate itself.

These moments don’t come along often, so we should seize them whilst the ironic iron is still hot. Go on, seize it…