The X Factor - the audition shows begin and the bad outweighs the good

X Factor 2008 launched on ITV this evening with the first of eight weeks of auditions – and naturally we were treated to the usual assortment of good singers, terrible singers, those who tried to argue their case with the judges and, of course, the sob stories. Thankfully (so far at least) the sob stories were kept to a minimum tonight – although one girl, 26 year-old Rachel Hylton from London, a single mother of five who has been in prison for drugs offences, really stood out as one of the auditions of the evening – Simon Cowell in particular couldn’t stop talking about her. Others to shine were London boyband JLS who sounded like an early Motown group and were tipped by Simon as potential winners and 16 year-old schoolgirl Alex from Bridgend in Wales who was trying to bring some good news to the town after a spate of local teen suicides – the judges found her very endearing with a sweet voice and she was through to bootcamp.

However, as usual the bad outweighed the good, at least as far as the edited highlights would have us believe, and how some people really believe they can sing is totally beyond me! Brothers Ant and Seb from Wales were particularly awful – one of them had a vaguely passable voice (although not good enough for the competition really) but this was interspersed with his brother attempting to rap alongside – it was truly excruciating. The judges were in hysterics but the brothers could not understand why their ‘talent’ was not being recognised and had to be removed by Simon’s enormous minder.

New judge Cheryl Cole can’t have watched many previous audition shows as she kept saying how shocked she was that the standard was generally so poor. She was particularly upset when one of her former Pop Stars, The Rivals’ compatriots, Nick, turned up to audition. Whilst Cheryl has been part of the UK’s biggest girl band for the past six years, Nick has returned to singing in working mens’ clubs and Simon, Louis and Dannii all told him that his voice was not strong enough to continue further in the competition. Cheryl found it too difficult to comment on his performance and was in tears following his rejection. No doubt she will toughen up considerably over the next few weeks and I think she will be a great judge - she seems to know what she's talking about so far at least!

In the meantime you can discuss the show in the The X Factor forum