Patrick Freyne: “Once I denounced Strictly; but it’s all that stands between us and annihilation by Emperor Cowell”

If I were ever on Strictly Come Dancing, my chosen dance style would be "freestyle disco" and my dancing alter-ego would be street-fighting, twinkle-toed dance enthusiast Prancing Pat. Prancing Pat has piston-like thighs, milky calves and a catchphrase.

“Only God can judge me!” he likes to yell at judging panels, before doing the robot, a “sexy” one-man-conga and a karate kick. Anyone watching will conclude this utterance to be very true.

Once, I denounced Strictly (BBC1, Friday & Saturday). I couldn't see the fun in watching people famous for other things doing something they weren't good at.

I was missing the point. The joy of Strictly comes from observing how professional hoofers skilfully manoeuvre their more rhythmically challenged partners.

For female contestants, this means being lifted from place to place, as if their dancing partner is a graceful amnesiac who has forgotten why he’s come into the room or why he is carrying an inert woman.

For the male contestants, it involves their female companions doing a lot of “prop” work, dancing on, under, around and about the contestant, whose job is basically to be a sort of sentient climbing frame, albeit one who gives good face.

The programme was originally called Carry Around and involved navvies repositioning, lifting and carrying planks of wood in front of a live studio audience. Someone suggested replacing the planks of wood with famous people and it became Celebrity Carry Around. Then, due to union difficulties, they replaced the navvies with dancers and it became Strictly Come Dancing.

Strictly is not a subtle show. Hosted by mirror-universe photo-negatives of each other, Tess Daly and Claudia Winkelman, no pun goes unexplored and no dancing theme is considered too on-the-nose.

Weatherperson Carol Kirkwood begins her dance in a raincoat and her partner Pasha Kovalev descends from the ceiling suspended from a lightning bolt (this is, coincidentally, how the Ticket editor enters the office).

Olympic runner Iwan Thomas starts by running around a small track being chased by his dancing partner. It doesn't look rehearsed. A sedated Daniel O'Donnell waltzes to When Irish Eyes are Smiling, because as an Irishman, he knows a lot about our nation's grotesque, simpering, ocular nerves. For his dance, his peepers pop out on stalks, as is the way of our people, and his irises part to reveal grinning teeth.

Peter Andre is called a "mysterious boy" in reference to his hit single Mysterious Girl, but he isn't really mysterious at all. He's Peter Andre. More than any other phenomenon on earth, Peter Andre is self-explanatory. He is an uncomplicated fact of life.

Strictly Come Dancing is ridiculous and crowd-pleasing and fun. There are familiar truisms. For example, "The audience loved it," means: "Salt the earth. You have ruined dancing for everyone." And there's always a chance a celeb will have an affair with their dancing guru (hopefully their "luurve" will not involve one person doing most of the work while the other struggles to keep in time).

But the main reason I like Strictly is because nothing is at stake. Jeremy Vine will not be fired by the BBC news department for not cha-cha-chaing vigorously enough (though that does sound like the sort of scare story the Daily Mail might invent about a Marxist BBC under Jeremy Corbyn. Also: this is what I hope for from a Corbyn regime.)

Then the darkness

Not all weekend entertainment is thus. The X Factor (TV3, Sunday) comes from a darker place where competing is hellish torture. "Who will survive?" says a booming voice as a giant glowing X plummets to earth.

“We sang like our lives depended on it,” says a traumatised member of soul band Silvertone.

“For me, today is like fighting for my life,” says a shellshocked young woman called Ebru.

This week, in the grounds of a country estate, Simon Cowell once more hunts the most musical animal of all: man.

Why doesn’t Simon Cowell wear an actual cowl like the one Emperor Palpatine wears? It feels like it would fit his whole shtick. Anyway, he does not, which allows us to see his smirking maw, out of which inanity and madness pour. “Could we put his voice into someone else’s body?” he asks of former Irish Eurovision contestant Joseph McCaul, and I’m pretty sure his people (the Sith) are working on it.

Cowl is accompanied by his dark judges, sitting this week between four burning torches and wearing sunglasses.

Weeping Rita Ora cries for all her children, before Cowell consumes them.

Cheryl (she has many names), her soul long gone, hasn’t cried in aeons. She is so expressionless that, at one point, I thought my television screen had frozen. She barely recalls the halcyon days when she was in Bucks Fizz or whatever it was.

Nick Grimshaw is basically a quiff and a denim jacket with a surprised expression in between. Magically granted consciousness by Cowell, he craves the sweet embrace of death and/or the Groucho Club.

The contestants, chillingly “on a journey”, “really wanting it” and “following their dreams”, are terrified. Why? Asks Cowell, who no longer remembers what it is to be human.

“We have to face you,” explains a young man called Che.

“It’s not about us. It’s about facing yourself, Che,” says Cowell, which may be metaphorically true, but not literally so. Literally they have to face Simon Cowell.

Che is a good singer.

This moves Simon to say, with wonder: “Imagine getting a Kinder egg and out comes a fully grown chicken.”

“I know what you mean,” says Rita Ora and high-fives him.

I don't know what he means, unless he means that Che's singing is grotesque, disturbing, highly unlikely and disappointing if you have your heart set on a small plastic toy. I'm scared and need someone to hold me. So I watch some more Strictly Come Dancing. Celebrity chef Ainsley Harriot is dancing the tango in a beret. All is well.