Gasp! Could it be true? Did the dream nearly end? Were we truly on the verge of something so terrible? Was it that close? Did John and Edward really end up in the bottom two of X Factor tonight, after so many press reports of ‘Jedward’ mania in the streets of Britain? Thank God they scraped through by the skins of their identical noses.

I’m still reeling from the shock that after such hysteria over the twins, the fickle British public could display such brutal indifference to John and Edward, who ended up fighting for their place on the X Factor stage tonight with a sublimely hilarious rendition of Robbie Williams’s Rock D.J.. And who were they up against? Who the hell cares? Some boring brunette whose name I can’t recall because she is not Jedward, because she is not entertaining, and mainly because she can actually sing. People who can sing in this competition are ten a penny; people who can make you laugh are an endangered species. 

Just think of all the sob stories the previous series of X Factor have forced the public to endure – tales of dead spouses or parents or brothers or aunts that are supposed to compel us to vote out of sympathy. Watching that show was like talking to my grandmother – I constantly had to hear of someone somewhere having cancer or dementia. It wasn’t a singing competition, it was sob-story contest interspersed with songs. But Jedward changed all that. Jedward were fun.

Not that the British public cared. No – the public would prefer to vote for people who can actually sing, as if they take this thing seriously. And of course that’s the awful truth lurking behind Jedward’s brush with failure – that after all these years the public still sees this damned show in a serious light. The previous successes of Jedward began to change that. It started to show that we had learned to manipulate the show for our own entertainment and not for the cash-cow purposes of Simon Cowell. Because after all people are right – Jedward would fail as popstars when faced with being played on the radio. They are a novelty act – there’s perhaps a good Xmas song in them (I can already see them in their elf costumes…), a tour, and that’s it. But why should we care about that? Don’t we have enough X Factor relics already? Do we really need another one who can actually sing, or can’t we just settle for being entertained by Jedward’s shenanigans until Xmas? Personally I don’t much care if Cowell gains another act to be milked by endless plays on the radio until kingdom come. I just want to have fun.

But no, British public, that’s apparently not what you want is it? You want serious singers because you think that this is a serious show. But know this, public: Those of you who voted for anyone other than Jedward make us all, as a nation, look like idiots. You make us share in your shame. How dare you take this seriously? Genuinely – HOW DARE YOU? I can only hope that you all realise your mistake now that we have all been presented with the possibility of a Jedward-free X Factor, and what a hollow and joyless show that that would be.