So that's why they call it X-mas . . .

So here we are, first Monday as a free man since the days of long hair (yes, hair - it was a long time ago) beards and ripped jeans as a student. A cup of tea, a scratch and good moaning to one and all.

Anyone watch the X-factor? While it was a television talent show it was a bit of light entertainment but it has grown into a monster and in the celebritocracy we have become the British public are swallowing - and paying for it - hook line and winner.

Past winners, with the exception of Leona Lewis, who has been marketed as a product by the producers and record company to sell the brand worldwide, are almost down to the level of being answers in pub quizzes and let us be honest, the finalists showed some talent but no more and, in many cases much less, than you will find in holiday camps, clubs and small variety shows with performers who have put a lot more year's work in.

What is disturbing though is that for three months or so a record company is running auditions on television, with built in market research and focus groups in the form of voting and are being paid to do it by ITV and, every time they vote, the public. We are being used in the name of entertainment.

Then, cynically, the record company has a final in which they launch what they cynically expect to be the Christmas No 1. We have been conned into paying for a massive ad campaign to sell a record. Saddest of all is the number of advance orders for a single when no one knows who the artist will be. People buy it just because it has been on X-factor.

Last year's Christmas offering was woeful and you suspect that if the Christmas release from X-factor had been a medley of Chipmunks hits with an accompaniment on spoons there are still people out there who would have bought it in sufficient numbers to make in No 1 - worryingly the same people have the right to vote.

As it is we have a rather second rate version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Any recording of that song will be compared to the late Jeff Buckley's haunting version of John Cale's cover and all the X-factor offering does is show just how good that 1994 version really is.

Sadly the Christmas No 1 spot has now come down to a raffle. Win the talent show and the prize is a guaranteed number one record cobbled together to make a quick killing. We are being conned and just can't see it.