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THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW/LOUIS WALSH:AS YOU ENTER the vast X Factorwarehouse in Wembley, your instinctive feelings about reality shows come to the fore, writes KATHY SHERIDAN.

You may giggle disbelievingly and hold your face up for the metaphorical shower of pixie dust. Or you may cast a cold eye on a shabby, modern Colosseum: a brutal arena where the gladiators are desperate binmen, histrionic shop assistants, love rats, recovering addicts and the occasional mugger; where the emperors are the judges and the baying mob is, um, still the baying mob, whose breezy thumbs-up or down (or mobile phone vote) signals either a temporary reprieve or the mother of all public savagings.