Ben Haenow winning X Factor is a great result – for Fleur East
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Version 0 of 1. The message, or so they’d have us believe, was that this was the closest series of X Factor ever. Time and time again, we were told that anyone could grasp victory. But, in truth, the winner was never going to be anyone but Ben Haenow. When the traditional weekly results breakdown was released straight after the final, it was revealed that Ben had been getting more votes than anyone else for the last seven weeks of the show. Even last week, when Ben’s chief competitor Fleur East took Uptown Funk and – to borrow some of X Factor’s stock quotes – gave it 100% and made it her own, Ben still received 12% more of the public vote than her. This one statistic reveals a lot about the state of X Factor, and talent shows in general, right now. Ben Haenow isn’t hopeless by any stretch. In fact, back in the dog days of my X Factor live blog, I pegged him to win at roughly the same moment that the public did. But he’s not the fully formed star that Fleur is. She entered X Factor with a clear idea of who she wanted to be. It’s an attitude that will serve her well in the long term, but one that denied X Factor viewers the sense of ownership over her that they desperately crave. They didn’t need to scoop her to ascension because she was on her way there anyway. Ben, meanwhile, was just a normal guy. He’d underline this time and time again throughout the series – repeating how he couldn’t believe he was on X Factor, or pootling around Croydon in a white van, or even (as he did on Saturday’s show) triumphantly bellowing “I’m just a normal guy!” like it was a terrifying, triumphant Hunger Games slogan. Over the course of the series, X Factor ossified his amiable mateiness into such a rigid portrait of the everyday working-man underdog that Labour MPs could have feasibly get the sack for tweeting photos of him. Arguably, Fleur was the better singer of the two finalists. But Ben had the better story. And if X Factor has taught us anything, it’s that journey trumps talent every time. The show might be operated by a cabal of steely-eyed record label executives, looking for the next hapless young idiot to wander into their web and get run into the ground for a quick buck, but ultimate power still lies with the viewers – the people who keep voting Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs as best factual programme at the National Television Awards. No wonder Fleur didn’t stand a chance. In the end, though, you have to credit the audience with making the right choice. By winning X Factor, Ben has just committed himself to a gruelling round of publicity that’ll sap all the strength from his body. He’s got that grotty, personality-free single to promote now. He did the breakfast shows on Monday morning. The terms of his corporate sponsorship will mean that he’ll have to submit himself to something called a #MeccaMoment for a national chain of bingo clubs. Contestant @Bhaenow will be having a #MeccaMoment with @MeccaBingo tomorrow. Submit your questions now 18+ #ad pic.twitter.com/hlOQDVwQsN Later, amid the grinding tedium of next year’s X Factor tour, he’ll be expected to churn out an album and promote that to death before appearing on a Sunday night X Factor results show 11 months from now looking bewildered and exhausted and ready for the inevitable plummet towards beautiful obscurity. He’ll probably pull it off – he seems better equipped to handle this than any X Factor winner in recent memory – but you can’t envy him. Fleur, meanwhile, has just bought herself enough time to figure out what she wants to do. She can go away now and muck around and experiment and continue to “develop as an artist”. We might not hear from Fleur for another 18 months but, when she surfaces again, she’ll probably be ready to join One Direction, Ella Henderson and Olly Murs as living proof that, at best, winning X Factor is just a runner’s up prize. |