Scott and the team wade through a selection of bizarre voicemail messages left on the Flirt Divert line, before exploring the emerging phenomenon of “X-Factor guilt” — the uncomfortable feeling of laughing at tone-deaf auditionees on the talent show.
The episode opens with a series of Flirt Divert calls, the show’s long-running feature where listeners leave messages for potential romantic connections. Among the highlights: someone has printed the Flirt Divert number on the back of their t-shirt (presumably for a hen do), a drunk woman who proposed marriage now wants to hold the recipient to it, and a peculiar Russian fact about a region that gives the population a day off on Wednesday — exactly nine months before Russia’s national day on 12 June — as an incentive to have children, with prizes like cars awarded to babies born on that date.
The main focus shifts to X-Factor guilt, a new phenomenon Scott and listeners have noticed while watching the ITV show’s auditions. The team plays clips of particularly poor auditions, including two women who perform funeral songs at gravesides and a girl who rates herself 10 out of 10 for vocals before performing “I Will Always Love You” — all to enthusiastic family support outside the studio. Scott acknowledges the ethical discomfort: while Flirt Divert callers haven’t volunteered for public judgment (they’re merely unlucky or annoying), X-Factor contestants have actively put themselves forward for scrutiny and therefore “deserve” the ridicule. Several callers ring in with their own X-Factor guilt experiences, with some defending the laughter as justified and others genuinely sympathetic to the contestants’ devastation. The episode concludes with this tension unresolved — everyone agrees the performances are poor, but the guilt lingers.
COMMENTS