Let's All Just Live in X-Factor World

By Tom de Plume

This week saw the revamping of Masterchef. What was once a serious cooking competition has now, because this is what the public really want, been reduced to some kind of personality-based sob-fest, where the best predictor of who is likely to progress is their ability to entirely debase themselves by begging, on their knees, whilst fellating John Torrode, together with the quirky movements of Greg Wallace's eyebrows.

Plans were unveiled to turn mundane parts of everyday life into an X-Factor style competition. A pilot scheme is being launched in Oldham, whereby people getting on the number 14 bus will be asked, before buying a ticket, to explain why they need to make the journey. Simplistic answers such as "I need to go to the shops", will not be accepted without some kind of embellishment and back-story. If the answer is not good enough, the person will be knocked back out the bus doors by a comedy retractable boxing glove. And then run over. On TV.

Jes Skelam, the brains behind the project at the thinktank, Pro Bono Simono Cowelus, explained, "The thing is, what the bus driver, and the public travelling on that bus want to know is, not simply why the person is making that journey, but precisely how the recent passing of their dog's sister's previous owner, and the obvious emotional turmoil that would have ensued, has inspired that person to change their lot in life by making a bus trip to Tesco, and this time they're not going to just buy a standard brown loaf, but that one with the seeds in that that all those posh people in Waitrose buy every week. I think this perfectly illustrates that, by bringing these people's mundane, pointless lives to the fore, we can reduce the whole population to a base level where everyone is equally depressed and uninteresting, because rather than doing anything worthwhile with their lives, they are listening to all the uninteresting things other people have done with theirs. It's a kind of Pol Pot approach for the 21st century, but without all the nasty chains and stuff, and less killing. That's the dream, anyway".

Meanwhile, a poll suggested that, when combined with the dumbing down of Radio 4, because targeting the middle class doesn't play well with those same middle-class voters' complete self-disassociation and patronising claims to really be interested in ska music, and William Hill TV, conscientious objection to paying licence fees is on a par as an acceptable form of crusade, along with saving thousands of acres of woodland that you never visit,  or saving libraries you have been to only to force children to read the same tedious 'literature' you now claim to have helped form you into the presumably admirable Radio-4-listening individual you are today.

TV Critic Emma Lincoln commented, "The thing that disappointed me most about this new Masterchef, was that it was, erm, what's the best way to articulate it... complete bollocks. That's an hour of my life I'll never get back. Actually, I might sue".