TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Britainology 96: The X-Factor feat. Sam Lake

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

For this month's first Britainology we've brought on comedian Sam Lake to discuss the impossibly influential UK cultural phenomenon of THE X-FACTOR. Sam Lake is an Edinburgh-based comedian from Cornwall. He has recently had a critically-acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Esmeralda’ and hosts a weekly podcast called “I’ve Had a Rosé, Let's Talk About Feelings" which you can check out here! Get the full episode on Patreon here! POPES/LAGOON SHIRTS STILL AVAILABLE! We've got some extras of our recent shirts that can be purchased online and will ship immediately! Get them here, and for Patrons remember that TFHOG69 gets you £5 off a shirt, and TFHOG420 gets you £10 off the bundle price! https://trashfuture.co.uk/collections/all MILO ALERT Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows

Help, I thought I could ride this horse, but I can't get down. I'm stuck on the top of this horse. It's a terrible business. And then once Danny's gone, sorry, once Danny's on and Sharon's left, then you get into the Cheryl years, which are great. Everyone remembers where they were when Cheryl did her first solo single and performed it on the X Factor, and she told everyone she was singing live and that is Honestly such a good bit. That's a really funny bit and then

Obviously the next year she had the malaria scare And she did like yeah, but this is also a great moment Yeah, Nate had to go through a piece and then came back in on Cheryl Cole's malaria scare And Nate had to go for a piss and then came back in on Cheryl Cole's malaria scare. So we were saying how when Cheryl Cole joined the X Factor, she did something like crazy every series. The first series, the first series she won with Alexandra Burke, she gets Beyonce to sing with Alexandra Burke, which is like still like a peak British talent show moment. Nobody can believe it happened. Louis Walsh is fuming because he's got JLS to sing with, I don't know, Westlife or something. And they were like,

how could that not have won? We've got nine stools on the stage. They all stood up off their stools. And then the next series, Cheryl does her first solo single, Fight for This Love. It's at number one for like five weeks. She does a live performance of it on the show with like hundreds of backing dances. It is a really good performance. She then, for the rest of her career, faces questions that she's not actually singing live, which she probably isn't. Then the next series, she gets malaria on a holiday in Tanzania. And, um, She'll call leading a very sort of heart of darkness existence in the mid 2000s. She does quite an emotional chat about it with Piers Morgan when he did like his Piers Morgan life stories series. And I just remember her just being like, I just remember laying in the hospital bed thinking

if this is my last moment, please just take us now. I just thought I just want this in the hospital bed thinking, if this is my last moment, please just take us now. I just want this to be over. Please just kill us. And she's still alive very much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's absolutely fine. And then, and then the ex- I'm going to draw McElderry in heaven. He won't be able to go on without us. It was so sweet to meet that nice little boy who didn't know he was gay until I told him that he was. But I said, don't, don't be gay on TV because you'll get absolutely battered for shit.

All right. Just like I thought that last night club. Don't talk about that though. All right. Speaker 3 What's funny is they make anti-malarial drugs. You can just take, you know, to prevent malaria. The problem is, is that they, um, they tend to make you slightly more prone to sunburn which is the last thing a Brit on a holiday in Tanzania needs. Yeah and she said when she got malaria she'd been out drinking the night before so when she was at the X-factor auditions not feeling very well she thought she was just hungover and someone pointed out to her that if she had, she was drinking vodka, if she'd drunk gin and tonics instead she might have been okay because the quinine in the tonic water would have-

It does something, yeah. Maybe doesn't. Yeah. And then, then obviously, Cheryl and Simon go over to America to do the X Factor USA. And this is when they can't understand what Cheryl Cole is saying, right? Cheryl Cole, what an interesting attempt to try and break America. And they really thought it might work because Cheryl has done a few singles with Will.i.am, which she'd always talk about just, oh, he's my close personal friend personal friend Will. I am. And he just heard my vocals and just thought you should make a record. And so I did. And they thought that would be her big break into America. If she became a judge on this show, nobody could understand

what she was saying. And she also decided to turn up with her hair three times the size of her head. She's got like a massive hairdo and no one can understand why. So then, I think two days of auditions happen, they go, we can't understand what Cheryl's saying, we need to replace her. So they replace Cheryl with Nicole Scherzinger, who up until that point was the presenter of the show with Steve Jones off of T4. Absolutely baffling. Don't know how that happened. It's like when Kat Deeley hosted So You Think You Can Dance and it's just like, sure, of course you have a fruitful career in America. Why wouldn't you? What everything about the Pussycat Dolls is baffling to me. Like the fact that Nicole

Scherzinger at the supposed height of her pop star fame was doing all of these relatively low rent jobs like TV presenter. But then also how the Pussycat Dolls have a cast system where there are some of them that are not really considered true Pussycat Dolls and they just work them to the bone but don't really pay them anything while the fat cats at the top of the Pussycat Dolls hierarchy sort of reap the rewards. Oh yes. Well the thing is like, if you listen to any Pussycat Dolls song, it only sounds like Nicole. And there is a behind the music documentary where she reveals that she basically records the entire album before any of the other members have heard it. And then they

were supposed to, I mean, we're skipping ahead a bit. They do reunite on the X Factor Celebrity in 2019. So we'll put a bit in that. We'll come back to that. Bit of fan service there. Bit of fan service there. Did you come across the X Factor USA at all, Nate? Do you remember this being a thing? Yeah, a little bit here and there, but it was, I mean, it was something that definitely was on TV. I didn't really watch reality TV so much. And when you think about the time when it was made, I'm looking at it to see

when the American thing started. But I want to say it was later, I want to say it was probably 2011, I think, 2010, 2011, thereabouts. And so at that point, I definitely wasn't. I just, some things from pop culture and references and obviously the clips that get made into animated GIFs that people use as reactions on social media. I did see a lot of those. I was also laughing when you made the thing about Cheryl, people not being understander. And it's true because quite frankly the only time that Americans typically encounter a Geordie accent is like when someone's playing a dwarf or a

hobbit in a fantasy movie and so it's just not really a thing we're accustomed to. I tell you what I love Alviter Zane Pett. I'm even checking that out on BBC America. I also love the music of Chris Rea. Just trying to... Especially the lyrics. Yeah so what you're basically implying is that you're having like the coming to theaters this summer announcer dubbing over everything Shiro was saying to make X Factor work that way. Every time she opens her mouth It's like a 1960s movie where it's just so not corresponding with the person's lips moving. I thought to myself just take us now. If it's our time just take us now.

Ooh, you're like my little brother." Yeah. It was, yeah, Cheryl Cole does have an incredible accent. It's pretty, it's pretty good stuff. There was, um, cause that season where Joe McElroy was on, who's also Geordie, who was the, the clearly, clearly gay teen who to everyone but himself. So very kind of like sweet, uh, like innocent kind of energy. And Cheryl took a real shine to him. And there was this line which my mum used to repeat every time Cheryl Cole came up in conversation where she just went, oh, you like me little brother. And I do now it's seared into my memory every time I think of Cheryl Cole or

of Joe McElderry. That is what comes into my head. Yeah, I always think of Cheryl Cole just trying to say vocals. Vocals? I thought your vocals were amazing, Pat. Absolutely. So she gets booted from X Factor and then you don't hear from Cheryl for a little bit. In the meantime, in the UK, we've replaced Cheryl and Simon with... in the UK, we've replaced Cheryl and Simon with... we've still got Louis on the panel. We've replaced Simon with Gary Barlow. Rob Garrick Gary Barlow. Do you know what? I thought that was absolutely fantastic. What a lovely performance. He was so...

Jason Vale Hardman Barlow. Rob Garrick Such a boring boring man for the first series at least. Then you have Kelly Rowland, who I think... Could she handle this? Do you know what? I think she could handle it, but she didn't want to. I think she was like, I'm not entirely sure why I'm here. As an American, I feel like being brought onto the thin gruel of British television,

if you're used to, you know, the heady broth of sort of the American entertainment industry is probably not particularly fun. Yeah. Well, I mean, she is sat next to Talisa from N-Dubs, which must be a huge moment for her. Probably a hero of hers. Which produces possibly one of the most iconic X-Factor moments of all time between Garry Barlow and Shalisa from N-Dubz. Oh yes, well I can't, now I'm struggling to remember if that was when Kelly Rowland was there or if it was Nicole Scherzinger the series after, but yes.

Oh yeah, I'm not gonna outdo you on that, I don't know. I think it's Nicole Scherzinger, here's why I think it is. Because I think I remember what the fight was about. There was a guy on Gary's team, the over 25s. Because of course, X-Factor is the only show where it wasn't illegal to be older than 25. It's so funny looking back on it now, because it's like boys, girls, groups, and the ancient decrepit, the fucking, the old folks home the over 25s imagine how disgusting thank God they're keeping their clothes on yeah fucking disgusting