I'm not a natural fan but I'll watch the early rounds – through my fingers to mitigate the embarrassment factor – until the BBC throws in its usual spoiler in the form of the far superior Strictly Come Dancing. Now that's a programme.

The stars' weekly battle to master the various intricate routines while still remembering not to have builder's hands or policeman's feet is thrilling on an Olympian scale.

The X Factor is poor stuff by comparison, but it'll do for now.

If the auditions get too much, viewers can always play the How Many Hundred Times Prettier than Dannii is Cheryl game? Don't be silly, it's not mean – they're both skipping off giggling to check their respective bank balances as we speak

I reckon we've seen the show's winner already though. The tears, the tragedy, the triumph have all found their focus in one perfect X Factor package called Rachel Hylton, the reformed drug addict who sang, it has to be said, a very good rendition of an Amy Whitehouse song.

Simon Cowell gave her not only a Yes, but accompanied it with a nod and a little wrinkle of his nose and the comment that she was the best audition so far, which is equivalent to the Pope's blessing for X Factorites, and means he looked at her and saw very big pound signs.

Miss Hylton, who has five children, three of them in care and two of them living with her, was pregnant aged 12, and a drug addict aged 13.

She spent her teenage years shoplifting, mugging and committing street robberies which resulted in a prison sentence before she woke up one day with a new head on.

She gave up drugs – but decided to have a fifth child – and at 26 has a voice that sounds like it has been dragged up on the streets, which it has.

The other contestants, those who haven't managed a prison sentence for attacking people in the street, or a period of drug addiction or to give birth to five children but only hang on to two of them, must be seething fit to bust at their wholesome lives, so normal, so blameless, so unworthy of camera time.

Miss Hylton's various victims over the years must be more than a little miffed too, not to mention her first three children.

Imagine, the first time you see Rachel she's bashing you and stealing all your stuff, the next time she's your Saturday night entertainment on prime time TV.

I wonder if any of them actually did whack a hammer through the television screen aiming at The Reformed One's head? Must have been tempting, especially if they wanted to spare themselves any more X-Factor.


Mr Madonna in a fix


it can't be easy being Mr Madonna. There's the money to ease the pain of course but, still, for a reputedly Alpha male like Guy Ritchie being as permanently second best as Prince Philip – and at least his role as Mr Nobody is official – must be a tad irritating. I reckon Guy must, as a consequence of his life permanently in Madonna's shadow, be suffering from general anxiety disorder, much like the rest of us

In Mr Madonna's case though his anxiety is displayed in the way he spends money on his age-defying wife.

For Madonna's 50th birthday, Guy, clearly thrown into a panic about what to get her, opted for the scattergun approach.

Thus the list went:

A baby girl

A love letter (laying out his agreement to adoption of said baby girl)

A necklace

A vegetable patch

A rose named after her.

If that isn't a man feeling very anxious indeed about his famous wife's big birthday, a man without a clue as to what to buy her, a man waking in the night worrying about it, and a man who has resolved the problem by determining to cover all bases, I don't know what is.


Hitting the right tone


For a moment there I thought one of the annual traditions of the British summer was on the wane – and then I saw those pictures of Fern Britton and realised that all is right with our world after all.

Every year at this time some national newspapers print pictures of high-profile women who aren't normally pictured wearing bikinis, doing just that.

Photographers take up beach watch to snap away at those who are too weighty, too elderly or just too sensible to be pictured in something itsy-bitsy.

The real interest in these pictures is in the words that accompany them - will they be glowing, or sympathetic, or snide?

Will they damn with faint praise, will they use the word "toned" or will the shameful cellulite be mentioned?

This week they've bagged a big one in the form of Fern, who obviously isn't such a big one anymore.

It could have gone either way, but Fern has got off lightly. Her newly size 16 figure was on display on a Cornwall beach and the general verdict was: toned.

Think I saw a bit of cellulite though...