Political X-Factor?

A record 19 million viewers watched Joe McElderry win X-Factor last Sunday and 10 million voted, earning ITV an estimated £18million.

Inevitability, after the celebrations have subsided slightly, there has followed the usual nonsense of suggesting whether this format is a way getting the electorate interested in politics (personally I thought the expenses scandal did a rather good job of that on its own).

What everyone seems to have forgotten, though, is that a similar format was actually tried five years ago for a series on ITV called Vote for Me which was described at the time as a political version of Pop Idol.

So why wasn't it a success?

Well the winner was a taxi driver, and a convicted fraudster, called Rodney Hylton-Potts, with his “cabbie’s manifesto” which included policies such as:

• the mandatory castration of paedophiles,
  
• the repeal of the human rights act,
  
• a massive prison-building scheme and
  
• an immigration deportation programme to reduce Britain’s population by 20m –
  

and various other policies which put him right in BNP territory, even the Sun described him as a “swivel-eyed right-wing lunatic”.

The format was swiftly dropped.