Bizarre that we just let Simon Cowell, like, do that. We just let him “be Simon Cowell”. There was that decade-long moment that I don’t think we talk about enough where he was the only person seemingly allowed on TV, first the villainous high king of The X Factor, then doing the exact same thing with the American version, then he launched Britain’s Got Talent, then whatever happened to his face happened to his face.
We’ve had a fallow few years of Cowell – The X Factor: Celebrity! Imagine thinking that would work! – but the DNA is ever-present and unbreakable: the jeans, the pointy shoes, the Beano haircut, the long-sleeved tee with the arms pulled short, the unblinking dread in his eyes, leaning forward over the desk before saying: “Look, OK? Sure.” My prediction is that we are at the midway point of Cowell. He will be the Bruce Forsyth of being gratuitously mean to average singers from the home counties. We’ll be watching him do it as the Earth is engulfed by the sun.
Look, OK? Sure: it’s a new series of Britain’s Got Talent (Saturday, 8pm, ITV), the 15th, and you know exactly what to expect by now. Amanda Holden is there, so dads can go: “What is she talented for again?” while deliriously fancying her. David Walliams will say something saucy and catty that will start an on-air fight, but then become tremendously emotional when a children’s choir sings with perfect pitch. Alesha Dixon is there as the voice of the youth despite being 43 years old, but she’s also intensely likable about it. And then Simon Cowell, the tight-faced vampire king whose ire only softens for dancing dogs. Lurking by a curtain, Ant and Dec pal around in that award-winningly delightful way of theirs. It’s all just nice, isn’t it?
Normally, I am fairly critical of nice, but something about Britain’s Got Talent gets to me: here are all these people, with their strange variety acts that they have absolutely nowhere to perform because nobody goes to piers or has loose change for street performers any more, earnestly doing that thing they do. Here’s a gymnast who can tie themselves up like a pretzel. A dog with a great personality runs through cones. Someone too nervous to ever be charismatic on stage absolutely smashes a West End standard. A dance troupe do something bombastic to the kind of remixes you only hear in gyms. Friends who met in the NHS sing a cappella! Five ex-army lads break into operatic song! Alesha Dixon’s standing facing the crowd now, look, swelling them up into a roar. David Walliams is shouting “Come on!” as someone really hits a note. Is Amanda Holden crying a single tear? Well, no, obviously, but she’s at least pretending to. And there Simon Cowell is, on the tips of his Cuban heels, breaking into a slow, astonished clap. The beating mantra that runs through Britain’s Got Talent is: can you believe this? That unglamorous people are capable of doing something amazing?
What happens next doesn’t matter: the audition hour-longs are the classic mix of “footage of people queueing”, “a crowd becomes astonished”, “Simon Cowell saying: ‘Well we weren’t expecting that!’”, “Nobody thinks this old man’s ventriloquist act is going to be any good but I guess it’s OK”, “David Walliams feigns fear at a performer swallowing fire or balancing on something precarious”, “a group of children celebrate the honk of a golden buzzer as if Santa himself came down from heaven to award them all a billion pounds”.
The live shows are too much of that manufactured ITV pageantry (do I really need to watch Ant and Dec remind us, once again, not to vote until lines open?) but it doesn’t matter because by then you are gripped – no TV channel in this country knows better the dark alchemy it takes to make you fully committed to a reality series by the end of the opening episode – and you’re sending the most expensive text message of your life to ensure those two dancing lads who met driving ambulances make it to the grand final. Pomp, ceremony, the constant threat that they will have to perform all this for the Queen: it doesn’t matter that you forget the name of the winner literally as their championship tickertape falls around them. If Simon Cowell still wants to do this then fine, fine, I still want to watch it.
