McElderry and the Machine

I’ve been engaged in a series of heated debates following my coming out in print as a fan of The X Factor (see Plattitudes, Dec 2009). Some people now approach me with the sort of ‘sorry but you’re soiled’ look that they’d normally reserve for Trots-turned-Tory or people who pull the whiskers off pussy cats. It’s no use telling them that when it came to the choice between Rage Against the Machine or X-Factor winner Joe McElderry for the Xmas Number One, my political colours were nailed firmly to the mast.

What surprised me more was the friend who turned on me with the sort of venom I’d last witnessed when her boyfriend slept with her sister. When I punched the air in delight at the Ragers’ improbable triumph over Simon Cowell’s pop machine, she rounded on me: ‘I thought you liked The X-Factor?’ How could I possibly take pleasure in ‘a bunch of privileged hippie college kids posing as anti-capitalists’?* Didn’t I care that they were spoiling it for working-class Geordie sweetiepie McElderry by denying him the same Xmas Number One status as the previous four X-Factor winners?

That was before I was mugged by the Alexandra Burke fan club. The 2008 X-Factor winner, she lives a short walk from me and half the neighbourhood takes it as a personal affront if you don’t think she’s the best singer since at least Leona Lewis. I made the mistake of saying to one member of the Burke posse that actually I prefer her mum’s music (she used to sing with Soul II Soul). This year I plan to be out of the country when The X-Factor comes around.

*According to the Privileged Hippie College Kids Monitoring Service, Rage Against the Machine score 68% (grade B-plus, borderline A-minus) on the PHCK index. Vocalist and lyricist Zack de la Rocha (who gets an extra mark for that so-Sixties’ hippie forename) is the son of a political muralist father, who was brought up by his anthropologist (Ph D, University of California) mother. Guitarist Tom Morello was brought up by his teacher mother; his (absent) father was the brother of Jomo Kenyatta and Kenya’s first ambassador to the UN. Bassist Tim Commerford’s father was an aerospace engineer and his mother a mathematician. Drummer Brad Wilk has said that witnessing how material wealth corrupted his father made him value the simple things in life.

Council bans Christmas

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without the familiar seasonal reports of local authority killjoys trying to ‘ban’ it. And like the Christmas displays in the shops, which the laws of commerce now require to be in place before the first leaves fall from the trees, the reports of the bans start earlier every year. This year it was the city of Oxford that was first in the media firing line with the Oxford Mail’s ‘Council set to axe Christmas’ headline on 1 November setting the tone for a spot of ‘political correctness gone mad’-style bureaucrat bashing. The Mail even managed to rope in Sabir Hussain Mirza, chairman of the Muslim Council of Oxford, to lead a chorus of non-Christian, pro-Christmas complaint.

‘This is going to be a disaster. I’m angry and very, very disappointed,’ Mirza moaned. ‘Christmas is special and we shouldn’t ignore it. Christian people should be offended and 99 per cent of people will be against this.’

Against what, exactly? A prohibition on plum puddings and carol singing, a la Oliver Cromwell circa 1649?

Hardly. Instead, it seems the charity Oxford Inspires took the outrageous decision to call this year’s city centre festive lights switch-on a ‘Winter Light Festival’, with the idea of incorporating Hannukah, Diwali and maybe a midwinter solstice bonfire or two. There are still going to be Christmas carols and a Christmas tree and people getting outrageously drunk and shagging each other at office parties and all the other things that make up a traditional Christmas, so it’s hard to see where the axe is falling.

Anyway, as Oxford Inspires spokesman Tei Williams commented, ‘The ceremony takes place on 28 November. It's hardly Christmas if it’s November.’