Sydney Oprah House

Details are spilling out thick and fast concerning Oprah Winfrey’s decision to launch the final 25th season of her talk show here in Australia. Judging by the audience reaction to the news (delirious doesn’t quite cover it), you wonder how on earth such a thing was kept a secret, not just from the audience and crew (who will also be going with her, all 300 of them), but also the whole country of Australia. During confidential negotiations which lasted a whole year, the planning was referred to as ‘Project O’ by the New South Wales government.

Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure takes in eight days of filming at some of Australia’s most iconic sites, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Sydney Opera House as well as the chance for the audience to “sample shiraz in Aussie wine country and shop ‘til they drop in trendy Melbourne,” says Winfrey, as if quoting directly from the press release. Of course, Oprah don’t come for free: details concering the costs involved show that Tourism Australia have shelled out $1.5 million for her visit, while the NSW state government have chipped in somewhere nearer the $2 million mark. But it’s small fry, really, when you consider that Oprah is practically a messiah to millions (40 million US viewers, to be precise), and that her show is broadcast in 145 countries. The opportunity to sell Australia as a prime tourism hot spot looks set to do much more than both Crocodile Dundee films combined.

But here’s the detail I love: in truly extravagant style, the audience will enjoy an all-expenses paid trip as well as their very own Motorola smartphone, and they will be flown to Australia by none other than celebrity guest pilot John Travolta. I don’t quite see the connection myself, unless maybe Travolta gets to pocket the Qantas plane once he’s done with it.

It may sound clichéd to you, but anyone looking for a cataclysmic difference in good manners between the English and the Australian should maybe try riding with one of Brisbane’s city bus drivers. “How long has the Red Rooster been shut?” says one driver, and not to me, either, but to another clueless passenger, who does luckily know more about the fried chicken franchisee situation in the western suburb of Ashgrove than I do, enough to at least manage a response of, “err, about four months, I think.”

“Did it just chip off somewhere or has it closed for good?” At this point I figured that maybe the driver was demanding a little too much information from his baby faced bystander, but he continues anyway. “Because you don’t often hear of Red Rooster shutting down.” This may well be true, although the residents of Brisbane are hardly underserved when it comes to drive-thru options. But that’s not the point. All I could think about during this whole exchange was, “What the hell is the bus driving doing talking to people?”

Naturally, as an English person who is yet to meet a nice bus driver, you’d have to put this down to an anomaly, a freak mix up of forms at Queensland Transport, perhaps, resulting in a mild-mannered lollipop man suddenly finding himself driving the City Glider. But then this happened: not only did I flag down the wrong bus, but upon telling the driver so, he then proceeded to pick me up anyway only to deliver me to the correct stop, without once asking for payment.

Now that’s weird. What’s even more strange is that this has actually happened to me on more than one occasion (Brisbane can be a complicated place). So, while exulting in the delights of friendly bus drivers though still suspecting the whole thing to be some kind of Jeremy Beadle style ruse, imagine my sheer delight when I stepped on board the 380 earlier today, and was greeted by this: “Hello mate and welcome to the happy bus! Welcome aboard the three eighty!” And no, I’m not making this up.

The driver beamed this quite loudly so that every seat should know their astounding luck to have purchased a seat on the happiest bus in Brisbane. He then proceeds to yell this information at all incoming and outgoing occupants. Given such enthusiasm, he had to rush his farewell words as people disembarked, similarly bemused, so his goodbye gesture sounded more like, “thankyouthankyoufortravelingwithustodayandhaveagreatrestofyourweek!”

Still, it’s the extra effort to be jolly which counts. As for whose benefit (his or ours) it barely matters; after all, such uncustomary theatrics are especially welcomed during one of the most mundane things you can ever do in life: the act of riding on a bus. The only thing more mundane is having to wait for it in the first place.

Of course, if a British bus driver performed a similar escapade, we’d probably all internally accuse him of some form of deep-seated sarcasm or at least a hint of self-loathing, both for his job and his passengers, either that or as someone so unhinged that they probably shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery. I thought the same thing myself for a while, that maybe I had caught the bus driver in a Howard Beale mad-as-hell style meltdown, a la Network, half expecting him to yell “I’m not gonna take this anymore!” and slam the bus into the river. Anyway, I was still thankful for occupying the happy bus. It may have been a somewhat self-conscious happiness, but that is still better than no happiness at all.


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Four Weddings’ (Channel 7)

I’ve found myself watching far too much of this show, which is essentially a catty, reality-based bitch fest where four Aussie brides are welcomed to each other’s weddings in order to rate them on a list of criteria, including the dress, the ceremony, the food and the reception. The bride with the most votes wins a Luxury Five Star Top Secret Honeymoon!

Clearly two things need to be mentioned. Firstly, that the grooms have no involvement in this, barely referenced it seems, and are completely sidelined in favour of virile brides looking to rain on their own parades. Which brings up the second issue: just where do we intend to draw the line with this whole bear-baiting process, where reality concepts are created just for the sake of conflict? This show has more in common with the voyeuristic, gossipy columns of Hello! magazine and carries just about as much weight. It’s so absurd that I would like to propose an antithesis to this show, ‘Four Funerals’, where we would follow four grieving widows as they give ratings out of ten for how sad the ceremony is, the quality of the buffet back at the house afterwards and, if it’s an open casket, the state of the corpse. I can almost hear Channel 7 sharpening their pencils.

Anyway, we were still delighted to see the Glengariff Estate on this week’s show, a mid-19th century building and grounds located in the plush Brisbane Hinterland, not just because it’s a lovely venue, but mainly because this is the very same location that we all went to for a wedding just the other week.

On the show this is Lucy’s Big Day. She tells them it’s a ‘bush wedding’, which was clearly misleading, so immediately the grumpy girls are disappointed. “I was expecting some cows,” says one of them. From here on in, Lucy’s ceremony is utterly scrutinised, even if she does appear to be having a wonderful time. “You could actually see the petticoat under the dress,” says one. “Everywhere you looked there were fake flowers,” says another. And the food? “There’s too much potato.” Lucy actually ends up coming last in the competition with 59 out of 130, although having watched this show more than once I can personally confirm that it is particularly hard to get a high score. The girls - as you can imagine for somewhat tactless women with free entry to one of the most important days in anyone’s life - are seemingly not chosen for their generosity.

Power Showers

Rain. Big rain. The tropical equivalent of showering with your clothes on. Biblical rain. For five days now, at least. It’s not quite what the Aborigines would call the waltjammirri, the legendary Wet of the Arnham Land in the Northern Territory where floods are a regular and seriously debilitating summer occurrence (while the Murray in the south has recently been prone to terrible draughts, thus perfectly demonstrating the fine balance of natural catastrophes prevalent in this huge and beguiling country). In contrast to England, you still won’t want to wear a coat even when the rain comes: the humidity in Brisbane is a constant, and you’ll perspire in places you never thought possible. Harold Jacobson talks of Australia as the perfect place to get to know your own person, from the hair on your toes to the sweat on your back. “Your body is simply up to more in Australia, and you are more your body. You drip therefore you are.”

I don’t exaggerate the intensity of the rain, by the way, even if it has now slightly subsided. Give it three days or so and the clouds will soon rebel, blackened in moist anger to unleash it’s fury yet again. I never understood what my Australian girlfriend said about the English climate until now: “It never rains in England, not properly.” The ceaseless UK drizzle is apparently the one notion to push acclimatised ex-pats over the edge upon their return to Blighty, where the rain is a steady, monotonous droll. Here, torrential downpours are a cleansing, therapeutic relief, greeted warmly by everyone. “Ah, good,” appears to be the local consensus, “we needed it.” Which underlines another similarity between our two nations: a pride in discussing the weather, even when it’s absolutely pissing down.


Turning 26 in Australia (the wrong side of your twenties, so I’m reminded) was full of happy accidents for me, a series of divine interventions, like the TV screening of Enter the Dragon (the best film ever made) and, just before Brisbane ensemble Velociraptor take to the stage at The Club House, the playing of the new Minus the Bear album over the venue's PA system. Not their best, obviously, but still the sort of subconscious planning that, on any other day, would probably have passed without too much significance. The staging seemed so perfect that I was half expecting my family and friends to walk in, holding a custard apple cheesecake and 26 candles.

The night was made suitably cheerful after watching Canadian rapper Buck 65 (who describes himself as the “Tits Magee of hip hop”), playing as part of the Brisbane Festival - an annual cultural event combining art, music and theatre - which follows neatly on from the festivities of the vibrant Valley Fiesta, the Big Sound unsigned music convention and the Brisbane Writer’s Festival. For those who don’t know, Buck 65 writes acerbic and bleak visions of a mostly apocalyptic nature: from the dusty mirage of the long, desert highway, to sleazy bars, red light districts and the threat of a zombie invasion. I described him as a hip hop hobo, despite his boy band good looks which conflict with a slacker baseball cap and his awkward dancing. He was affable company, invigorating a small, seated crowd in a makeshift big top, telling detailed soliloquies on the time his equipment was stolen and he was kidnapped by strippers. We went to the first night of a two day residency, so god knows how he managed to top that.

The Gallery of Modern Art are showing a retrospective of Douglas Kirkland photography. Kirkland was in his mid-twenties when he took possibly the most iconic images of Marilyn Monroe for Life magazine, in which the actress is famously draped in only a single bed sheet. According to Kirkland, this was her idea, and as the photos clearly demonstrate, it would prove to be quite a steamy encounter. Kirkland, already married and with two children, allegedly refuses Monroe’s advances and instead directs any prevailing sexual tensions through his camera lens. It’s a commendable story, a prime example of self-restraint leading to great art, and Kirkland fondly remembers it without a hint of regret. But I’m sure he still had great fun developing the film.

Anyway, I like this one of John Lennon, taken while filming How I Won the War in Spain, 1966. You’ll also find equally revealing portraits of a roll call of Hollywood’s greatest, including Ann-Margaret, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, as well as Coco Chanel, Peter O’Toole and Michael Jackson, who the photographer met while working behind-the-scenes on the filming of the 1983 'Thriller' music video, just before the madness.

While I’m equally excited about the world premier of Shanghai Lady Killer tomorrow night, which just about ticks every box for a great night out. It’s a theatrical interpretation of traditional Chinese wuxia stories (sort of martial arts folklore, in a somewhat simplistic explanation) in a futuristic neo-noir setting, concentring on a kung fu assassin in a dystopian vision of Brisbane’s Chinatown. It’s being billed as the highlight of the festival, bringing live action chop socky to the stage and starring Wang Fei, who geeks might remember from Sammo Hung’s recent Wushu movie. Just one of many examples of the cross-cultural appeal of the Brisbane Festival and the fantastic work that the organisers here have done.

Altiyan Childs gets my vote in the Australian ‘X Factor’. We’ve now started on the live shows, and it’s already compelling stuff. The other day my girlfriend walked in to see me catching up on excerpts of the show on my laptop and looked genuinely concerned: “This is becoming a problem,” she said in a defeatist tone, as if I had just been caught rolling a joint.

Childs, a 35 year old forklift truck driver from New South Wales, is like a version of Marti Pellow if he had managed to avoid any sense of achievement. He’s often a tearful mess, saying This Is My Last Chance, but it’s OK, because Ronan Keating Believes In You. (When did this become the barometer for pop success?). The relationship between mentor and pupil has already reached a slightly uncomfortable man-crush stage: “You’ve carried me on your shoulders,” Childs says to Ronan, fighting back the tears and the urge for a deep pash. “A plane didn’t get me here. You did.” Childs, it’s worth remembering, had made a constant series of false starts at boot camp and at the initial auditions where he somehow forgot the words to Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’, the main refrain being, “Woah/Your sex is on fire.” Tricky for some, obviously.

Every constipated vocal is delivered as if he’s on borrowed time. Every performance is his encore at Woodstock. At the moment, he’s playing the Chico card: hardly the best singer, but there’s something so impassionedly sincere about Altiyan Childs that you can’t help but cheer and cringe at him, usually at the same time. Check out his first live performance by clicking here, where he appears to be dressed as some hybrid Tom Jones libertine in leather pants. Weird.

Independent's Day

Do you remember when we were discussing the Australian election, all those many moons ago? Well, the results are finally in. It’s taken so long that you have to wonder whether Burke and Wills were responsible for delivering the memo. Being British, I’m aware of the lack of coverage that Australian current affairs gets in the western press. They could be testing nuclear weapons out here in the Simpson Desert and it wouldn’t arouse UN suspicions for at least a few months. Australia - the world’s largest island, remember - seems so far down under that no one else in the whole western world seems at all bothered by it. So if you do feel this way, feel free to skip to the bit about custard apples. But if you want to know, the country now has a government, and a most interesting one at that.

Needing 76 seats to form a majority, the two main parties (Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition) were both tied to 72 each the last time we spoke. This sparked a two week getting-to-know-you session with a trio of Queensland country independents (all ex-Nationals) who found themselves in the unenviable position of tipping the balance of power. No one enjoyed their fifteen minutes more than Townsville hick Bob Katter (‘Mad Katter’), who wore a cowboy hat to every press conference and bellowed his demands from the podium. He opposes gay marriage, refutes the evidence supporting man-made climate change (are people still arguing against this?) and wants to stop Australia importing bananas. He went with the Coalition.

Even with Green Party backing and one other sympathetic independent, Labor still managed to coax the remaining two conservative indies into joining them, making up their wafer thin majority. Opposition leader Tony The Terminator Abbott must be fuming to find himself still in opposition despite having a larger share of the public vote and taking a storming swing away from Labor. Labor had a rotten election, all in all, and if things go haywire again (like, say, spontaneously dumping your leader), then the next election could well be called Judgement Day: Rise of the Machines. Tony Abbott made an impassioned defeat speech which could have been summed up in three words: “I’ll be back.”

Although Julia Gillard may look happy to still be in charge, she’ll certainly be having fun negotiating those hard fought Labor polices with three independents and the Greens. Toxic Math can’t help but picture a scene involving the normally quiet resolve of a motherly Gillard frantically unravelling as she oversees a party of squabbling babies at bath time. But if it works, then just imagine: multi-billion dollar funding reforms for regional areas, stricter gambling laws and a whole heap of parliamentary reforms, not to mention new hospitals in Hobart. It’s a long way to go, I’ll give you that, but let's give it a chance.

So then, my first gig in Australia turned out to be the West End Community Block Party, hosted by holistic health agents Black Dove Body Bar and situated in their car park, complete with a homemade jewellery stall, tofu hot dogs and tarot card reading. As a last minute addition to my girlfriend’s singing duo - adding percussion to her melodic pop songs and very clever, harmonic structures - we were sandwiched after the African drumming but just in time for those wanting to take part in the Zumba demonstration.

Playing this sort of outdoor community event always conjures up romantic notions of legacies born, memories made and fateful occurrences, like the Woolton Village Fair where Lennon first met McCartney. Perhaps a passing A&R man would happen upon Vulture Street, taken in by the sound of the shaker and my girlfriend’s sweet singing on his way to picking up a coffee and sign us on the spot. Residents would tell news reporters that they were there on that historic day, when the traffic would stop in stunned adoration… But, alas, no. We opted for a ‘meat dog’ after the gig and went home.

There was a fantastic cross-cultural episode between my girlfriend and I the other day, caused by the new music video to ‘Shame’ by Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, which you‘ll find on YouTube. Their long running feud was a big deal to idiots up and down the UK for many years, so this folksy, self-conscious, irredeemably crass reunion may act as ‘closure’ for some (and not just the two main idiots involved), but it’s somewhat reassuring to know that the whole incident will have absolutely no baring whatsoever on the people of Australia.
“Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow have done a single together - it’s shit,” is essentially what I said.
“Who’s Gary Barlow?” my girlfriend asks, adding: “Is he that paedophile?”
For some reason, I find myself jumping to Gary Barlow’s defence. This isn’t something that I would normally do, but then calling the man a paedophile is going a bit far.
“No,” I say giggling. “He was in Take That…” But that hasn’t made matters any clearer. “Oh right... weren’t Take That very popular here? They were huge in the UK.”
“Who am I thinking of?…” She’s thinking out loud now. “Sparkles?... Gary Sparkles?”
“Sparkles?” I reply. “Do you mean Glitter?”
“Glitter!” she exclaims, “Gary Glitter!”
Quite what this says about fame - or infamy, rather, which is probably the more accurate term - is clearly open for discussion.

I’ll keep my talk of custard apples to a minimum (after all, you don’t read Toxic Math for it’s nutritional guidance), but this fleshy, green-skinned, brain-like structure is a sweet and tropical delight, pictured opposite. I’ve never seen them in the UK, but then I reckon you would struggle to send one back in time via Airmail. Now I just can’t get enough of them, so we try to stock up whenever we're visiting the weekend markets. Aside from halving and scooping out the innards, watching out for any potential choking hazards, if those of you who are more familiar with the fruit have any serving suggestions then Toxic Math would very much like to hear them. Leave a comment, if you can.

Going for Gold

I was excited to see Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast for a couple of reasons. For starters, my guide book made it sound appallingly curious: “When you’re not sunbathing, swimming or surfing, you can go bungee jumping or just window shop, eat out, socialise or wander through the malls, one of which, Raptis Plaza, is adorned by a full scale replica of Michelangelo’s David.” After reading that I was particularly sold on the idea, but also because I’d been to the Gold Coast before and could just about make out the silhouettes of audacious skyscrapers peering out over the sun-drenched sea in the distance, very mirage-like and ominous. “Surfers Paradise is approached through a thicket of petrol stations, fast-food outlets and motels - a reconstruction of the outskirts of many an American city, and in a very similar taste.” I don’t think that last bit was meant as a compliment, but then Australians (Queenslanders is maybe more accurate) seem to be united in their hatred of Surfers Paradise as representing the more artificial arse-end of Australia’s Gold Coast tourist trap. You could almost sense my girlfriend’s reluctance as she started to make the 40km descent south. “It’s shit as,” she warned me before we’d even got in the car.

But as a Queenslander herself, and quite a staunch one at that, we were trampling over hollowed ground, and her eyes were already glazing at the thought of her most cherished childhood memories. “We used to come here as kids at Christmas,” she said when we reached Currumbin, a beach further south. Or when we passed the courageous windsurfers at Miami beach (Miami beach?) and entered Burleigh Heads, she’d say, “Whenever I come here I get an ice cream from that servo.” This kind of influence makes impartial critiquing quite tricky for a writer, but although I couldn’t really share in her nostalgia (an Australian Christmas at the height of summer, for instance, is particularly different to a British one), I could at least get behind the sentiment: the beaches further south were idyllic, inviting and a perfect place for frolicking as a child. My equivalent was the Rec’ in Swindon, which was essentially a muddy field and some metal swings.

Her mood shifted as we followed the guide book and travelled delicately through the “thicket of petrol stations” which didn’t look too dissimilar to the approach of any other east coast Australian city. Mackay, perhaps. Aside from the tourists who come from all over the globe (but mainly England), the Aussies here are personified by their own ‘look’: “blond, plastic retirees” is what I’m told, those entrepreneurial developers who became wildly rich due to a large-scale property boom which has seen building work continuing to this very day. With an almost year round sunshine, the financial implications for opportunistic capitalism is practically academic. “You’ll start seeing lots of ugg boots,” my girlfriend says by way of distinction, maybe suggesting that those who inhabit the falsity of Surfers Paradise for too long become identikit embodiments of their own environment. I’m about to contest this when a blond haired woman in denim shorts and black singlet steps into her boyfriend’s yellow Lamborghini, and promptly keep my assertions to myself.

Having never been there, the comparison to Miami is lost on me, although I saw a lot more in common with the stills you see of Las Vegas. Surfers Paradise has every hedonistic avenue covered, including small theme parks, strip clubs, Irish themed bars (like the Lansdowne Road Tavern), slogan T-shirt stores, two condom shops, a strip of designer outlets from Prada to Louis Vuitton and even Egyptian themed mini golf (‘King Tutt’s Putt Putt’), in much the same way that the British have carved out replicas of Blighty into the Costa Brava. We encounter two ‘Meter Maids’ inside a shopping centre, dressed only in gold sashes, bikinis and high heels. “We’re collecting for charity,” one of them tells me, although she seems as puzzled by the concept as we are, dressed seemingly for some kind of pornographic rodeo. If they weren’t solely looking to recruit adolescent boys, then I would have seriously considered an alternative dress code.

Of course, quite why Surfers Paradise feels the need to trade on the reputation of other continents and not their own is a moot point: I spot hotels called both the Chelsea and the Dorchester. These are the skyscrapers you can see in hallucinogenic form from the shoreline up and down the Gold Coast: hotels, all as ostentatious as the next, some in towering wave-like structures, others modelled on inner-city tower blocks. My guide book politely describes the skyline as “architectural overkill”. It might be referring to the Marriott here, which boasts its own man made beach, not to mention an indoor waterfall and creek where visitors are encouraged to snorkel amongst the imported tropical fish. They’re currently in the process of building Soul, a multi-million dollar development combining both luxury apartments and retail outlets across 77 storeys. That’s the problem with Paradise, its never quite enough.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to understand what surfers actually thought of it, being as the most inaccessible part of Surfers Paradise was the sea itself, currently behind a wall of construction. Being a nuisance for good punctuation, I now wondered whether the lack of a possessive apostrophe in the name was more than just a grammatical oversight, and that perhaps a distinction needed to be made between just how much ownership Australia’s surfing enthusiasts wanted over this gratuitous exploitation of their sport. I’m told that the surf is better at Currumbin anyway, and that locals tend to visit Surfers only on ‘schoolies’. This is the gap between finishing your final high school exams and waiting for your results, where a cavalcade of stoked underage drinkers head to Queensland’s party capital and ‘get maggot’. It is not uncommon, apparently, for a school leaver to fall from one of the taller buildings, thus somewhat jeopardising their own attendance on results day. I know this to be true, unfortunately, because my girlfriend has seen it happen.

“This place makes 14 year olds act like they’re 21,” she says in moral disgust. Surfers Paradise certainly did revel in a self-consciously reckless air - that much was certain - and I didn’t need to see a group of skateboarding children trying to hold onto the back of a moving bus to work that much out. But there were bigger disappointments that would eventually lead us back to the car. When trying to find the Raptis Plaza and it’s replica of Michelangelo’s David, we had to consult two walking advertisement boards who told us, with no great sympathy, that the Raptis Plaza mall had been demolished some years ago, but not before David had been bought by a secret buyer and sent to a new shopping centre in Carrara. Proof, if proof were needed, that there is just no accounting for taste.


Sunday night. Club X and Y, an underground nightclub modelled on a cage fight. In the outside smoking area, two teenage boys are talking. One is in dark, formal work wear with buffed shoes which suggests that he might work here, the other definitely doesn’t: I quickly figured out that he was the next DJ, starting at 11pm, sat in crumpled designer tracksuit attire, cotton cap and oversized sneakers. He may have been a member of Hodouken!
“In five years time I don’t want to be doing this,” the DJ was saying. “I’m doing five gigs a week. Look at Slinky, man, he only does one gig a month.”
“Yeah, totally,” says his waiter friend.
“You know what Brisbane needs?” The waiter didn’t. “We need smaller, 100 capacity venues and get some niche shit going on.”
The waiter was left in no mind as to who would best provide this, but the DJ persists. “So - even if you don’t like what he drops - who owns it the most here?”
There is an attempt to say another name - Slinky, maybe - but the DJ quickly directs the waiter to a more satisfactory answer. “Well, it’d be you, man.” 


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘The X Factor’ (Channel 7)

Another first for Australia! A few months ago it was 24 hour news, now it’s Simon Cowell’s ‘The X Factor’; as Mr Chesty Pants and his cohorts of identikit media cartoons wipe another continent’s collective consciousness completely dry. At least Australia doesn’t have to put up with looking at him on the judging panel all week, but his presence is felt everywhere, like a ghost in the studio gallery. His minions have read the reality rulebook well, and even if the Aussies can’t quite get bona fide pop princesses on their panel (like Cheryl Cole), at least they can get the 90s equivalent.

That’s a slight dig at Natalie Imbruglia, obviously, the diminutive ex-’Neighbours’ actress who turned into the angst-ridden anti-Kylie with great songs like ‘Torn’ and, er, that other one. Being the only lady on the panel, her job is to generally get a bit over emotional. The tears fall during a particularly moving sequence involving cancer-sufferer Karl Dimachki, who sang Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ at the Melbourne auditions despite having part of his tongue removed. But generally she’s just a bit too nice, an accusation you certainly couldn’t throw at her sour-faced equivalent Dannii Minogue, replaced because she had the audacity to favour having a family over telling people off on television.

It’s funny seeing Ronan Keating being represented as some kind of volatile Piers Morgan-style mood-swinger when he talks with such an unassuming Irish chirp - he’s more like some form of cheery bouncing leprechaun auditioning for a Gucci ad. He can’t quite do authoritative, and he certainly can’t do angry, best demonstrated on Thursday night when he quite unconvincingly stormed off set because it had “been a long day” leaving some runner with a clipboard to try and coax him out of his dressing room. “We’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning,” he complains, but it’s hard to be too sympathetic when you consider his job is to sit behind a desk and vaguely look interested while being paid a GP’s salary for the effort.

I didn’t know who Guy Sebastian was before this show and, as much as he’s been amiable enough through a long week of auditions, I still don’t really care. He won the first ‘Australian Idol’ in 2003 which at least makes him the most qualified judge on the panel, but being the ‘extra one’ on a reality show is an unstable profession: this seat is essentially a revolving subs bench in which the most pleasant celebrities can be regularly exchanged and ignored. The only member who is making a conscious attempt to stand out as King of the Shits is shock jock Kyle Sandilands, who makes absolutely no effort to hide how much of a shit he really is.

When he’s happy, he says things like, “That was crazy, crazy good.” But he also uses the same faux-exclaimed radio tone when he’s dressing down his contestants, so even his compliments sound twisted. Now, unlike the rest, I can actually quite buy the notion of someone like Kyle Sandilands being a bastard: for starters, he once strapped a 14 year old girl to a lie detector live on his radio show to ask her about her previous sexual experiences, which quickly backfired when she confessed to being raped at the age of 12. He lost his job as head tormentor on ‘Australian Idol’ for that stunt. Unlike Cowell, he doesn’t own a record company, or hold a vested interest in any of this. In fact, he strikes me as one of those DJs who probably doesn’t even listen to music: a frustrated, walrus-like embodiment of Dr Fox, essentially, but nowhere near as endearing.

But we’re living in a saturated, post-Cowell televisual nightmare now, people, an environment where people like Kyle Sandilands are allowed to thrive and prosper. That may not be a reason to stop watching, obviously, but certainly make you reconsider.