The Ex-Factor: How Leon Jackson Ended Reality TV Singing
LEON Jackson is the nation’s “newest star”. So says the Mirror of the winner of TV’s X Factor talent show.
The Sun says Jackson is a “character waiting to bust out of his shell”.
In “LEON: I’ll be the 2008 Caner of the Year,” the Sun’s Gordon Smart says Jackson drinks vodka and Redbull, is a “lager monster” and “has even sampled the devil’s brew Buckfast”.
The paper is banking on a drunken Jackson being more talented than his weepy sober pre-celebrity self. Jackson’s adventures with drink will make him a victim, and better able to be broken on the wheel of the tabloids. Given his singing style, we expect Jackson Hic-Ups Motown to be in the shops in time for Easter.
For now, the main story circling Jackson’s head is that he should not have won the show.
The Mail says 1,500 viewers have complained about the X Factor result. (*A study by the Anorak Foundation of Institutionalised X-Factor (AFIX) found that voters on TV phone votes are 26 times more likely to complain via the phone.)
Rhydian Roberts, the kind of act you see presenting Finland on Eurovision night, finished the show in second place. His supporters are complaining that phone lines were jammed and their votes unrecorded. The Mail’s Allison Pearson uses the full might of her column to talk of the “travesty” of Rhydian’s lost votes. How did he lose to the “tone-deaf” Jackson?
In the Star, Rhydian has “snubbed” the X Factor after show party. Readers hear the words “stitched up”, “fixed” and “pinch of salt”.
ITV counters the allegations by saying that Jackson won by a “10 per cent margin”. How many votes that is we aren’t told. It might be six, two or a hundred. If it were hundreds of thousands, ITV would most like tell us, bragging about it, even.
But they don’t. And the real story might not be that Leon Jackson is the latest karaoke singer to make it big, but that he will be the last…
Posted: 19th, December 2007 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids Comments (11) | TrackBack | Permalink
