Sing for the moment

Yes. Like everyone else in England, I watched Britain's got Talent on Saturday when I should have been out clubbing/ meeting friends/ having sex/getting drunk/living it large. Instead I sat at home with a takeaway (not Domino's in case you were wondering, sod their adverts) and watched a grandfather dance with his jailbait daughter and Susan Boyle in a losing battle to fight off a nervous breakdown as the results were read out.

Enough has been written about the contestants so I am not going into all of that here (apart from the fact that the fact that the News of the World constantly referring Ms Boyle by her virginity, is creepy whichever way you slice it). What I will talk about is how cheesily Saturday night light entertainment of 1970-early 80s the whole thing is, and surely this sort of thing should have ended when Paul Daniels, Little and Large and Jim Davidson decided to call it quits. Except back then it was actually about singing, dancing or juggling. Today its about backstories and how you managed to pull yourself up from living in a shoebox with your 32 brothers and sisters and learned Opera by watching it in the windows of Curry's. Which means a more apt title would be "Britain's got Social Issues" or the more snappy "Britain's got Pity".

Which comes back to the question of why we still watch something that should have been mothballed when I was still in nappies. Possibly something around needing to feel that "anything is possible if you put your mind to it". Or that we need real life Cinderellas as long as they remain compliant, happy and smiling and not in danger of doing anything remotely human like show insecurity, prejudice or swear at journalists.

Still, for me the winner of BGT was the set designer. That individual was truly talented.