A few decades ago, ITV's early evening slot was occupied by AJP Taylor, who garnered ratings in their millions for delivering straight-to-camera lectures on subjects such as the great war and the Russian Revolution. (TEXT 50741 if you think Lenin invented the Iron Curtain, or 50742 if you think it was essentially constructed against him by the capitalist European powers.) But as you'll be more than aware, Toto, we're not in Kansas any more, and the presiding genius of today's schedules is a man whom any regular readers of this column have come to know as the Karaoke Sauron. He is, of course, Simon Cowell, and he's currently beaming his subliminally hypnotic masterplan into your home twice-weekly.
Taylor's programmes were widely regarded by fellow academics as frightfully vulgar, so one can only speculate about what the professors and proletariat of yesteryear would have made of the endless cavalcade of snot and tears that now constitutes primetime entertainment, or indeed of the Facebook group "Cheryl Cole to die a painful death", or the viral BlackBerry message informing the Chezza that "Every1 has a bullet for you".
But first, a recap. On Sunday night's edition of The X Factor, nation's sweetheart Cheryl Cole opted against putting the sweetly talented young Zimbabwean Gamu Nhengu through to the live studio rounds of the competition. Instead, she preferred to advance two ladies who had . . . well, I believe the technical term is "lost their shiz" during their auditions, one of whom presumably reminds Cheryl of a particularly damaged version of herself.
Alas, Gamu has since suffered what tabloid journalists traditionally refer to as a "double blow", in which two disproportionate setbacks are yoked together to imply some kind of parity, when none exists. A classic "double blow" would be Jordan failing to land some knicker contract in the same week as discovering her child was blind and afflicted by a growth defect. And so with Gamu. Not only has she missed the chance to lose out on a quarter-finals place to 1 Direction's version of You Raise Me Up, but she is likely to be deported back to Zimbabwe, after her mother's visa expired in August and the application to extend it was turned down. It seems that not only did Mrs Ngazana make an administrative error, resulting in the application being judged "out of time", but she has reportedly claimed benefits to which she was not entitled.
Well. I need hardly tell you that the Sun, Mail and Daily Star have finally found the sort of benefit-dependent immigrant family they can get behind, and their ability to hold two contradictory positions at once has rarely been more grimly hilarious. Thus it was that Cheryl woke to bleeding heart Mail headlines about Gamu's "visa woes", with wickedly disingenuous reports larding on the accusations that she'd sparked a "race row".
So Cheryl's security has been stepped up after imbecilic threats on her safety, while the roads arounds Gamu's Clackmannanshire home were closed after crowds gathered bearing banners protesting her X Factor elimination.
Encouragingly, the matter has already reached the offices of state, with foreign secretary William Hague accosted about it at the Tory conference, only to declare: "We mustn't do things differently just because people are in the news."
It's not a view shared by Scotland's external affairs minister Fiona Hyslop, who has written to the home secretary and the immigration minister asking them to reconsider on the basis that: "Gamu has demonstrated that she is a hugely talented singer and a great asset to Scotland and the country's music scene."
Meanwhile, the family's lawyer seeks a judicial review, while Gamu's MP Gordon Banks has written to the Scottish secretary. "What we've got to hope," Gordon tells Lost in Showbiz, "is that the media doesn't just focus on this one case, but looks at the whole issue of the way out-of-time cases are handled."
Good luck with that . . . If only Chezza Cole could be involved in them all. "Yes," sighs Gordon wistfully. "I feel sorry for the others."
And yet, even among such stiff competition, arguably the most absurd aspect of the whole business is the suggestion that Cowell has made a misstep in excluding Gamu.
To get some perspective on his "howler", let's consider a previous observation of reality TV ubermensch Mike Darnell, president of alternative programming for America's Fox network and a man we might reasonably decribe as post-moral. Mike was once asked if he rued anything about Who's Your Daddy?, in which an adopted woman was invited to guess which of a group of men was her father. His only regret? That the inevitable controversy the show generated was "outside the programme – so it doesn't translate into ratings".
It seems reasonable to suspect Cowell holds a similar worldview. So if the Gamu saga results in significant numbers of viewers switching off their sets in disgust, then we can start talking about missteps. But if, come Saturday night, The X Factor's ratings only increase, then I think we may chalk up another victory for Sauron, and salute him once again for creating a system so devilishly shockproof that the house always wins.
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