Everybody sing hallelujah

TV REVIEW:

SO I WAS on my knees in an industrial estate in Ballymun, applying silver duck tape to my rear bumper, gripping a freshly purchased scissors between my chattering teeth, cold wind whipping through my bluing fingers - and all because the polite but firm monkey-hatted man in the car test centre had refused to pass me on my re-test as cracks were still visible. Jesus, if he thought my car was in need of cosmetic treatment he obviously hadn't looked at my face, which by that stage had more fissures than a spent Vesuvius.

Anyway, anyway, anyway, I'm suturing up my old banger, with as much tenderness as I can muster, when from the radio (which works, although the heater doesn't) comes a heavenly seasonal "hallelujah". "Halleluuu-jah, halleluuu-jah" - the syllables trickle over my numb ears like tiny angel tears. "Halleluuu-jah," sings the passionate young woman, and any minute now there will be an orchestral swell, and there I am, a frozen old turkey, up to my batwings in gaffer tape, choking up to what will surely be the Christmas Number One. Oh, how did it come to this?

Alexandra Burke, a 20-year-old Londoner won The X Factor 2008, beating Louis Walsh's shiny new boy band, JLS (eager puppies in casually louche neckwear, who sang a George Michael classic with their noses pressed against the windows of sudden fame), and also scuppering Cowell's protégé, Derry teenager Eoghan Quigg (a child with an extravagant hairdo, an alarming smile and the dubious support of the political establishment in Northern Ireland, who were gamely attempting to tie themselves to the bandwagon of gobsmacking good cheer provoked by his pre-finale homecoming).

Oh, I'm sorry, I just didn't have the will to resist the sentimental juggernaut that was X Factorthis year. As Alexandra, the beautiful young Londoner with the powerful voice, wept all over the artificially snowy stage, a choir of angels and saints behind her, I cried right along with her. It's the age of emotion, innit, mate. Reason and intellect (mine at least) seem to have got cast aside with the test card.

Around eight million votes were cast over the four-hour-long finale. Eight million! Would there have been as many had Britain conducted a telephone poll on whether to go into Iraq, or join the single currency, or embalm the queen mother? This is political, this is power. One pucker of Cheryl Cole's bony little shoulders, one pearly tear cruising down her sculpted face, one quavering "ay luv yah" in her sweet Geordie tremolo, and eight million telephones leapt into action. Gordon Brown should have this breezy little Tinkerbell soldered on to his anxious shoulder.

So, on the basis of the downloads for Alexandra's single and projections for her worldwide pop domination, Cowell, already a multi-millionaire, can bathe in bearded monkey milk and chew on husks of aphrodisiacal mandragora for the rest of his natural life. Producer and judge, the man is a ruddy phenomenon, and, bar wreathing your telly in garlic and driving a stake through the plasma, there is no escaping him.

Anyway, if you're looking for objectivity, you're barking up the wrong reviewer: on the night of the show's tremulous final, I and my two sons were well and truly hooked, reeled in and flapping on the deck along with the rest of the screeching masses. And for once in my raggedy life, the person I (metaphorically) voted for won. Hallelujah!

WASN'T ALL fun and games this week, though. The Christmas hangover hit a bit early with When the Party's Over,a sobering (excuse the truly awful pun) seasonal lecture from TV doc Mark Hamilton. Hamilton (who looks like a chap who should be ironing his stone-washed denims and singing into his hairbrush rather than applying his stethoscope to the nation's giddy ticker) offered some dire warnings for the festive season. "Drink now and repent at leisure" was his basic message, and he had all the nasty little facts to prove it.

Prosperity (remember that old thing) apparently brought with it a huge increase in our alcohol consumption. We have, as a society, become "normalised" to heavy drinking. We may not be filling the pubs like we used to, sipping our pints and banging our clay pipes on the turf stack, but we are, it seems, while perching around our very own Ikea tables and cosying up to our radiators, beating into the vino at the rate of knots. And counting the empties in the recycling box at the end of a chicken-and-chardonnay weekend is our only realistic measure for how much gargle we're consuming these frosty nights.

The real cost of slamming into another bottle of Merlot while we're twiddling with the remote control looking for Desperate Housewivesreruns is liver disease, yellowing eyeballs, swollen limbs, psychiatric breakdown and the rattle and hum of early death, all of which are becoming more prevalent, especially among women.

Hamilton challenged a couple of volunteers to stick to the recommended weekly alcohol intake (a figure he reminded us not to aspire to, but which we should not exceed) of 11 units of alcohol for a woman and 17 for a man. The task was not easy. I sat bolt upright on my couch (well, tried to) and desperately attempted some mental mathematics (not my strong point, especially when I realised that the goblet I was drinking from probably contained about a week's worth). Oh dear, the resolution list grows longer.

Nasty medicine, perhaps more efficacious if prescribed in the new year.

'PLEASE HOLD. Your call is being answered in rotation." On the subject of wicked realities come to rattle one's Christmas crib, Irish Timesjournalist Conor Pope brought us Prime Time Investigates: Service With a Snarl,an investigation into the cruel, Mephistophelean world of customer service. I don't really need to give you a snapshot of the labyrinthine nightmares people have endured courtesy of various telecommunications companies to demonstrate the corporate lunacy at work. We've all been there and, besides, the language of such institutions, presumably designed to assist their users over the edge, speaks for itself. For example, "the credit management process is in conflict with internal systems" simply means you've just been charged for a service you never received.

If Pope's PriceWatch column and Joe Duffy's radio show (to name just two of the media cracks releasing the steam from a boiling-over public) are anything to go by, serious watchdog programmes with teeth could be one of the few boom industries in what will surely prove to be a challenging New Year.

'I'M A SOPPY old cow who falls in love with my hookers." I've been turning a blind eye to Channel 4's efforts to woo and titillate recently. Last time I looked, it felt as if the station was drowning in a sea of Gok Wan and edible thongs and pixillated women showing their glowing implant scars. Man Hunters: Meet the Gigolos is a provocative title but not a good enough reason to reverse my viewing trend. The only important issue it raised was whether there is some presenter-making factory in the bowels of Channel 4 whose machinery is permanently stuck on Louis Theroux reproductions.

"I've just filmed a man having a w**k on his bed," said film-maker Guy Gilbert (Theroux reproduction in sunglasses). "Definitely the weirdest thing I've ever filmed." Oh honestly, Guy, you could barely contain your delight that Rico, one of the Neanderthal subjects of your paltry documentary, had an ego bigger than his appendage to spice up your flaccid exploration of the world of the weary, credit-crunch-curtailed gigolo.

Gilbert's film, which was allowed to yawn over a long hour despite containing enough material for an energetic three minutes, concluded (surprise, surprise) that, in fact, very few women go out and buy sex, despite a proliferation of websites offering the services of various steroid-buffed Latin types with a penchant for royal-blue underwear. Two of the three women Gilbert could find who had used the services of an escort agency, and who were interviewed behind the obligatory mask of pixillation, said they had become emotionally involved with their purchases and that what they'd actually like is a boyfriend. (By this stage, I was bored enough to eat the Christmas tree.) The most successful escort was John, a balding middle-aged man in a pink polo shirt who carried a briefcase to his assignations (which, by and large, seemed to involve giving a naked massage to one game 70-year-old).

"I'm a personal assistant," said John.

"You're not a personal assistant," scoffed Gilbert.

"Oh I am," said John (who shares David Beckham's vocal range, and there the likeness stops). "I assist people, personally, I offer the boyfriend experience." Good god, now I truly know what I don't want to find in my stocking.

BEFORE I SAY Happy Christmas and lash out to buy a turkey, I just want to mention Après Match, who turned up on The Late Late Showto fill in when the alleged professional mistress of an allegedly well-known alleged chef was allegedly told by a bunch of lawyers to take a hike and not speak about her allegedly torrid alleged affair. The Après Match trio performed a pocket Late Late with guest appearances from Eamon Dunphy, three tenors called Keiron and various wigs. It was hysterical, and Risteárd Cooper's impersonation of Pat shuffling his cue cards was almost lovingly cruel. They should do it every week. With a bit of luck and a lot of litigation, they'll pepper the new year with the best Irish satire on the box.

And so Happy Christmas . . .

tvreview@irishtimes.com

The X Factor ITV and TV3, Saturday

When the Party's OverRTÉ1, Sunday

Prime Time Investigates: Service With a SnarlRTÉ1, Monday

Man Hunters: Meet the GigolosChannel 4, Tuesday

The Late Late ShowRTÉ1, Friday