Background

Recently in Britain, we have had a TV series called ‘Pop Idol’ inflicted on us, presumably to distract people from the fact that our country ceased to work sometime in 2001. The central principle of the show is that, as everybody seems to only be interested in buying records ‘made’ by identikit manufactured bands and singers, then the public can get to choose which bland Muppet will be extruding from their commercial radio station of choice for the next year (eighteen months, tops).

Starting with ludicrously oversubscribed cattle-calls in the major UK cities, the applicants were winnowed down to fifty finalists, then ten, and then the general public got a chance to do what it enjoys most. Mess up the lives of random strangers. The last ten were eliminated, one a week, live on television by popular telephone vote. If you’d never seen somebody at the exact point that all their dreams turned to dust, then it was all rather edifying. After all candidates showing a spark of originality or deviation from the pre-programmed template were eliminated, we were left with the latest teen sensation, still with the plastic injection holes showing where he was finished off by the factory.

There was somewhat of an upset in the final, when the lad that the papers had been backing (in the sense of promoting until you were heartily sick of his bland-pretty-edging-on-to-cartoonish features) lost. The paper’s favourite, who gloried in the true rock ‘n’ roll name of Gareth, even had a stutter that made it cringingly difficult to watch him being interviewed and was no doubt the main source of his appeal to the millions of twelve year old girls who wasted their Pay As You Go vouchers voting for him. There wouldn’t seem to be a better lower common denominator heart-string-puller than the boy who can barely speak, but has the ‘Voice of an Angel’, or the ‘Voice of an Overproduced early 21st Century Pop Singer’ at least.

Gareth had the overall demeanour of a baby woodland creature, which would have made his eventual utter destruction by the tabloid press that made him all the more diverting for us true connoisseurs of modern cruelty. Instead Will, or ‘the Other Bloke’ as he was generally known as, triumphed. At least he looks fairly confused to begin with, so the gradual edging into total incomprehension as he realises that his life and work are at the whim of Fleet Street may prove to be an equal treat. Let’s not kid ourselves here, the second that The Sun or The Mirror think that ‘their Will’ has become slightly too sure of himself, the very instant that he does something that seems to detach him from their umbilical control, or even just the day when the Editors decided that they are now bored of their new cause, then he will be ridiculed, rubbished and then ignored in the tradition of a hundred non-stars before. Next stop: ‘Where are they Now?’ circa 2015.

But that’s the point. The early rounds, with their constant stream of self-deluded honking proletariat, leaping onto the spikes of the judges’ scorn, Icarus-ing for no better cause than a desire to earn lots of money and get into the papers, worked mainly as a snuff movie for human dignity. When Will gets washed up, fat and bald if he’s lucky, dead if he’s not, then we will have been witness to the fulfilment and then desolation of somebody’s life. And we’ll all snigger behind our hands.

Pop Idol was a sequel to the series Popstars, which produced a band so formulaic that one member left to shack up with a soap star before they’d managed to get more than a couple of records out. The search for a replacement member was then held in the same way that the initial auditions had been , thus keeping the entertainment Ouroboros well fed on its own flesh.

But what now for the genre? If you’ve created a number one band and a number one singer, where do you go? I personally don’t think that the format would work with, say, a jazz band, orchestra or anything else that involves the mildest hint of interest in music for its own sake, rather than as a conveyance to the glossy magazines. But fear not, readers, for M. deRooftrouser has the answer.

Presenting: Pop Loser

It’s a simple premise. All the recording artists in the world are forced to attend auditions through various coercive techniques (sodium penthahol, threatening of family members, exposure of career-wrecking predilections or whatever). The ones of any (comparative) quality are allowed to go home, leaving us with the pointless, the useless and the irritating.

When we get down to the last twenty, through random selection if it becomes too difficult to tell the chaff apart, then the public get to vote. However, rather than making the contestants sing to be granted their freedom, only those who humiliate themselves in a sufficiently entertaining manner will get to go back to their audio-offensive old ways.

Imagine the ratings for: ‘Tonight on Pop Loser – the Backstreet Boys swim in hot chilli sauce, Limp Bizkit eat dog food and Ricky Martin gets beaten up by a kindergarten class.’ I would not like to be the programme that’s on opposite that.

But why, I imagine that I hear you ask, would they do such stuff? Well, that’s the point of Pop Loser. At the end of the series, the eventual winner has to stop. Stop singing, stop recording, stop selling. Their back catalogue will be deleted, their albums removed from stores, their gold discs repossessed. If the public’s in a good mood, we may leave them with enough money to get through college and get a proper job. But it won’t be a particularly good college.

Bearing in mind that this will be the apotheosis of entertainment, the ultimate summation of an industry, I’m expecting to make quite a bit of money off it. But if just one child with moderate singing ability doesn’t get sent to stage school, or if one bunch of cacophonic students decides not to send their tape to an A+R man, then that will make it all worthwhile.

Well, that and the fact I’m rigging it so Britney wins.