X Factor is back! We are now at the mercy of Dermot O’Leary on a Saturday and Sunday evening, a power shake and a serious amount of patience is required to endure the marathon show which includes excessive ad breaks, a ridiculous movie trailer style voice-over for every contestant, and the ever competitive cringy comments from the judges, but god is it addictive!

This year we are ‘treated’ to a new line up of judges, apart from Louis that is and who exactly has he got ‘information on’ to still be employed by this show? Don’t get me wrong it wouldn’t be the same without the ickle irishman and his clueless taste in talent… Wagner, Jedward, in case you think I’m being mean, he was responsible for Westlife covering Barry Manilow songs, who pays this man’s wages? But it really wouldn’t be the same without his camp staging of his acts and his random (unhelpful) responses to performances such as “you were born to do this” and “you’ve grown in this competition”, seriously he said both of these tonight, its the first show, but my favourite Louis comment of the night has to be “I believe in you” which he said to mostly all the acts, he really is one step away from Bruce Forsyth!

Still, I am impressed with Gary Barlow, he’s a much nicer Simon Cowell even with the ‘smell the fart’ acting face he does for each performance so you really don’t know what he’s going to say next, genius!

Tulisa is a much better Cheryl chair choice, she keeps threatening to “say it how it is” but not sure she’ll risk her contract on that.

And Kelly has obviously been told to “America it up” in her new role, with memorable sayings such as “you hot momma” and “hell yes” and “Damn girl!”.

Still as the judges would say at least 15 times an episode it is an “amazing” show and even though most of the perfomers are below 20 years old, we have to remember that this “is their dream, it’s all they’ve ever wanted, they can’t do anything else, and they don’t know what they’ll do if they don’t get through”. Clearly, we owe it to them to keep watching!