Not to be repeated

They were asking for it, weren’t they? Two of the three judges on ITV’s Pop Idol-format show, Vote for Me, John Sergeant and Lorraine Kelly, should have known better. Identifying which candidate they didn’t like only meant he or she would win. And sure enough, I’ve found out (after the event of course – much in keeping with other things in my life!) that Rodney Hylton-Potts won.

Rodney, if you remember, is for castrating paedophiles, bringing an end to immigration, reducing the UK’s population by a third and spent time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for mortgage fraud. Given the closeness of his views and experience of the penal system which some in UKIP share, I’m surprised he’s an independent.

Last week I penned a few posts of the show. Already you could see the path it was going down, with only two of the final being liberal. And while I would have been interested to follow the final show (if only to shout abuse at the screen) frankly I had a social life to leave.

I was therefore spared the image of Rodney beating the single issue candidate, Eileen, who is running a one-woman crusade to bring down phones masts (and likely to be snapped up by some Lib Dems somewhere; she does have that slightly bossy middle-aged woman manner which I’ve come across on the stump).

The show’s presented, Jonathan Maitland, told the Sunday Times that “The winner is a comedy fascist nutter and a cross between Lord Brocket and Mussolini. It’s not embarrassing that he won because we’ll now respect our real politicians more.”

I don’t know about you, but that is spin worthy of the new Labour machine when it was running at its finest.

But what while all the media attention is on the loathsome Rodney and his views, what does it say about the people who voted for him? Or maybe it’s the particular demographic which watches ITV? Would the result have been different had it been on the BBC?

I doubt the show’s producers will be running this show again for quite some time – well, at least for another four years.