Judgement Day for X-Factor judges – my pennyworth!

I’ve just been invited to sign a petition to take Natalia Kills off The X-Factor. The invitation and the petition are now de trop, since Ms Kills and her husband Willy Moon have already been dumped from the show. An excellent decision by TV3, if I may say so.

I have watched The X-Factor occasionally. Real talent can emerge from the competition. Benny Tipene and Jackie Thomas spring to mind.

Talent among the judges is a rarer commodity. The qualifications for the job appear to be that you should be pitch deaf and have the depth of personality of a stone. I will exempt Melanie Blatt from this unkind assessment. She is both beautiful and bright. Stan Walker occasionally reminds me somewhat of the Harry Enfield character Tim Nice-but-Dim, but that is an unfair and inaccurate judgement of a likeable personality who tempers honesty with mercy in his assessments of The X-Factor’s invariably trembling seekers after fame.

The most recent confidence and soul-destroying judgements from the late, but not lamented Kills and Moon, are perhaps merely further evidence of the truism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. One could perhaps add that the smaller the fry wielding the power, the greater the probable level of corruption. This is perhaps a version of the “small man, big car” syndrome.

To be fair I’d never heard of Natalia Kills or Willy Moon until they appeared as judges on The X-Factor. To be honest as well as fair, they have almost certainly never heard of me either. I hope not. May the circles in which we move never converge!

My judgement of them before Ms Kills decided that it was time to demonstrate the brutality implied by her name was that they looked and sounded like clowns masquerading as connoisseurs. But clowns do not take themselves as seriously as these two.

I tell a story about meeting the great Yehudi Menuhin in 1970 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Auckland. I was very nervous. Trying to make conversation before the interview, I heard myself asking, “Mr Menuhin, do you think the violin will ever be as popular as the guitar?” One of Menuhin’s minders laughed and said something to the effect, “What a preposterous question!” Menuhin thought for a moment, then said to the minder, “My dear chap, that is the musical question of the age.” I knew that wasn’t true. But I also knew that Menuhin had not approved of his minder’s put-down of a callow and very nervous interviewer. Now that shows character.

Cruelty becomes no one regardless of the circumstances. The cruelty of the powerful toward the powerless is simply unforgivable. That is as true of judges in a TV talent competition as it is of haranguing judges in the courts. In both arenas the quality of mercy is all too often strain’d.

Anyway, good outcome, don’t you think? The baddies get their comeuppance!

Media trainer and commentator Dr Brian Edwards posts at Brian Edwards Media.