Very enjoyable start - compared with last year.

The show for me remains unwatchable without record and rewind - so you only need spend 20 mins actually watching the show, FF past all the half-second strobe picture effects - but well done Mel B - a judge who finally just says what most people are thinking (studio audience excepted).

Also less emphasis on nutjobs (P!nk impersonator and family excepted), and already a couple of truly exceptional talents unearthed (without exagerration) in Jahmene Douglas (awesome performance) and the precocoious talent of 16-year-old Ella Henderson who did the totally ridiculous thing of singing her own composition, yet it was a bloody good song, with a surprisingly mature vocal.

Welcome back.

Yup, with little else to do last night I watched it with a resignation but actually those two acts were well worth the wait and the crazy family who have bred a daughter with some severe delusion and anger management issues left me very happy with the fact that they don't live on our street, watch that bit again on replay and I think that the whole story of a family of tribute acts was made up by the daughter on the spot - her parents just go along with the story and seem quite surprised to be mentioned especially the mother who looks a bit bewildered about being called a Shania Twain tribute artist - its hilarious but disturbing at the same time.

My only issue now is going forward, what will they do with Jahmene and Ella next - will they be allowed to continue to express themselves in their own unique ways or will they now have to conform to the very strict stereotype X-Factor templates ?

It doesn't matter who wins, any spark of creativity will be throttled out of them and they'll be given an album of Boyzone B-sides to record.

If you have any ambition of longevity or artistic integrity that show is not the way to go.

On the other hand you could name dozens, hundreds of singers and bands who have written one albums worth of very good material and then had nothing else to back it up because that moment is gone.

But for a 16 year old to be writing a very accomplished song like that is a bloody good start although what she needs probably isn't to be an instant "star".

On the Pink tribute act is it just me that finds it slightly suspicious that someone with a Europe-wide career as a Pink tribute act would go on the X Factor saying she wanted to be a star in her own right and promptly sing a Pink song. She would have to be either a) monumentally stupid or b) manipulated by the producers. The way she flipped I'm going for the latter.

As for Mel B, it's great we're in the 21st century and she's still doing her shouty, blunt speaking, northern woman act. She should've worn a flat cap and held a whippet in one hand while eating chips in gravy. She appears to be turning into her Bo Selecta character more each year.

So this cack programme is back - oh great !!!!

not sure why it deserves it's own thread, TV thread is good enough, surely.

I have no idea why anyone would watch such a pointless programme, to think we were celebrating the epitomy of human endeavour not 10 days ago, and now we're reduced to this garbage.

You are being too kind by using the word garbage.

I haven't described my feelings about the people that watch it!