As the nights draw in and we settle in our living rooms for cosy nights in front of the TV, the Autumn TV schedule heralds the return of The X Factor. Despite Simon Cowell being lauded as a “Music Messiah” for giving a great opportunity to amateur talent to become professional vocalists, I would suggest that this is no more than a “Second Coming of the Messiah”…..

Forty years ago TV offered the viewer two “Britain’s Got Talent” / “X Factor” type Talent Show programmes in the form of “Opportunity Knocks” with Hughie Green and “New Faces”. In the early 1970s, the talent show pantomime villain equivalent of Simon Cowell were record producer Mickie Most and songwriter Tony Hatch, both of whom were compulsive viewing as panellists on ATV’s “New Faces”. Although they were the men you loved to hate, you also knew they were normally correct in their acerbic, vitriolic assessment of flailing, dying acts!!

But were the successful music acts to come out of “Opportunity Knocks” or “New Faces” any better than those to have been spawned by “The X Factor” or “The Voice”? I would suggest not. If you take 1974 as a sample year, the two talent shows were responsible for the brief and ephemeral chart careers of Paper Lace, Freddie Starr, Lena Zavaroni and Sweet Sensation. With the exception of two No1s, Paper Lace’s “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” and Sweet Sensation’s “Sad Sweet Dreamer”, I very much doubt whether you remember their follow up singles “Night Chicago Died” and “Black Eyed Boys” ( Paper Lace ) and “Purely By Coincidence” ( Sweet Sensation ). As for the other two, I am absolutely certain that unless you bought the singles of the solo Top 20 hits for Lena Zavaroni and Freddie Starr, few will recall Lena Zavaroni’s “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me” or Freddie Starr’s pathos laden “It’s You”.

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