How cruel is this? You get a child – a girl who’s not very streetwise from somewhere off the beaten track. She’s just 14 and doesn’t look a day over 12. In the face of old-before-their-time teenagers, her naivete is touching.
She’s a pretty good singer with a powerful, if immature, voice. Her proud and doting family have told her she’s fantastic, like you do. That she’s brimming with star quality.
So when this kid watches the X-Factor and reckons that’s the future for her, no one has the heart to tell her it’s a bad plan. Maybe the family actually believe it could happen. So she’s fixed on it and who knows, she might give Shirley Bassey a run for her money… eventually.
No one should stop kids dreaming the big dream, it’s what they do. What’s the point of telling them that by the time they’re old enough to act on the fantasy, the urge will probably have passed?
Then what happens? Mr Cowell and his cohorts come up with the brilliant idea of lowering the age for entrants to the X-Factor to 14. What were they thinking?
If you’re over 18 and technically a grown up, it’s up to you if you want to risk national humiliation for the extremely slim chance of fleeting stardom.
Quite rightly Mr C told this lass from the Valleys that she wasn’t ready for a shot at the big time. She just stood there tears washing the makeup from her chubby cheeks and it was clear she just didn’t know how to cope. So she threw a tantrum any toddler would have been proud of.
It was toe-curlingly awful to watch, but how’s she going to cope on Monday morning in double maths after all her classmates witnessed her humiliation?