Reality television is a vessel for feelings that dare not speak their name

Watch It and Weep

I was part of the so-called “Boyle backlash”, or at least I would have been if I had actually bothered to vote for someone else. For me, this year’s Britain’s Got Talent was not unlike a general election: the choice was so dispiriting that I felt I’d be better off sitting on my hands (or, to be precise, using them to push peanuts into my mouth).

I was troubled by Susan Boyle, and the newspapers’ attitude to her, from the start, but when I looked for a “Stop Boyle!” candidate (or perhaps that should read: “Save Boyle!” because, as I write, the poor woman has cracked and been admitted to the Priory) the form sheet was blank, in spite of the judges’ view that this was the best BGT ever. Honestly, the way the three of them talk about it – especially Piers Morgan – you’d think that this competition had been running since 1976. In fact, for all that it feels so very 1976, it is just three years old.

A dance act? There were two, one of which, Diversity, went on to win. No, thanks. The memory of Legs & Co coyly twirling their umbrellas to the strains of Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” lives long with me, I’m afraid (this is the one about a cake being left out in the rain; try and mime leaving a cake out in the rain, and you’ll find that it all comes flooding back).

A grandpa and his granddaughter tunelessly performing singalong-a-love-in? I don’t think so. I went to Pontin’s as a kid and saw enough acts like this in a single week to last a lifetime. There were three children, including the drippy Hollie Steel, who cried when her “Edelweiss” got trampled beneath the foot of big-night nerves. But I hate child stars! They’re much more disturbing than Boyle.

I’d ruled out Shaun Smith, the pub singer with the world’s most boring face, the minute I laid eyes on him. Stavros Flatley, a podgy former restaurateur and his even podgier son, who did silly Greek dances, wore custard yellow wigs, and generally wiggled their moobs at Amanda Holden, made me feel vaguely sick, because they were always snuffling away at each other’s bodies – “’E’s my boy, and

I love ’im!” – even at moments of extreme sweatiness. Was their act sponsored by Lynx or something?

All this ruthless elimination left me with Julian Smith, a saxophonist. Poor Julian. Imagine: he is nearly 40, and yet still not famous (even worse, he’s from Birmingham). He just wanted a break! He just wanted to make his kids proud! For extra pathos, he wore a knitted hat at all times, like a homeless person. For a while, I must admit that I fell for this stuff. “He’s so nice,” I told T, a BGT refusenik. “He’s so humble.”

Then I came to my senses. Smith was just Kenny G in search of a self-esteem manual. Thus, my evening was ruined. The thing about BGT is this: if you don’t have a favourite, it’s an entirely pointless event unless you record it, and then watch only the bits where Simon Cowell makes small children cry.

Cowell gets better and better. He is nasty, and he is also permanently bewildered, as I suppose any sane person would be, faced with this stuff. Britain’s Got Talent? Britain’s got a taste bypass and emotional incontinence, more like. But I can talk. This column is just me trying to wipe the image of myself, alone on the sofa, watching the show through a veil of tears. Not even the fact that I know I’m being manipulated can stop this tidal wave of salt and mascara, I’m afraid. I could tell you that it stirs me that a boy with a Swansea accent whose name is the very un-Welsh Shaheen Jafargholi and who basically sings like a girl can find his dimpled way into the nation’s heart. But since that sounds almost as nauseating as one of Morgan’s little homilies, I will desist.

I have no excuse, of course. Sentimentality: I could not be more suspicious of it if I tried, and yet every time it’s around – or every time it picks up a microphone – I reach for a (white) hankerchief.

Britain’s Got Talent
ITV1

Pick of the week

Hope Springs
Starts 7 June, 8pm, BBC1
Wives on the run, from the makers of Bad Girls. A drama – allegedly.

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire
11 June, 9pm, BBC2
Matt Lucas’s new comedy.

That Mitchell and Webb Look
11 June, 10pm, BBC2
Not as good as Peep Show, but it’ll have to do for now.

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