I have always loved the X Factor for the entertainment value. Sadly the first ten years of the show had failed to serve up anyone whose music I would buy or who I would ever pay to see. Nonetheless, watching the auditions always threw up countless memorable moments and I loved the drama of the live shows. I was beginning to wonder if there would ever be an act that I genuinely loved though.

A New Year

I didn’t approach the 2014 X Factor with much hope. This year’s story started for me when I attended one session of the arena auditions at Wembley. Despite the fact that my afternoon did include an early viewing of Andrea Faustini and Chloe Jasmine who would eventually make it to the live shows, I left relatively uninspired. I also went to the Boot Camp session for the groups which much the same result.

At Last!

Then the X Factor 2014 began airing on television and everything changed. I was watching the room auditions whilst doing the ironing expecting the usual mix of deluded freaks and sob stories. My interest had actually started to wain and I wasn’t paying too much attention until one guy stopped talking to the judges and started to sing. I nearly dropped the iron!

Ben Haenow was in the house and I absolutely loved him. Now there was someone I would pay to see singing the phone book! What seemed curious to me was that the media didn’t seem impressed at all. Nobody was talking about Ben Haenow, even when the live shows started. Initially Andrea Faustini was all the rage and then somehow Fleur East became the front runner. Why wasn’t anyone else seeing what I was seeing?

X Factor Fashion

True enough, Andrea had a great voice and could belt out a song. Fleur was doing wonders with her overall performance and was clearly a talented dancer with great looks. Her case was being liberally enhanced by Simon Cowell’s favouritism and it also appeared to me that she was being styled better than the other contestants. Fleur wore a series of brilliant outfits that were extremely current and a few spectacular bras which had me considering running to the lingerie shop as my wardrobe was clearly deficient!

The Final

Ben remained under the radar but made the final. Fleur was red hot favourite which I couldn’t understand and I had resigned myself to Ben being second as Andrea had clearly fallen off his perch. When Ben was announced as the winner I was a surprised as he clearly was, although gratified to find that people had woken up and appreciated him at last. Then I checked out the voting figures for the series which are published shortly after the final and got a bit of a shock.

Ben Haenow may have been largely dismissed by the media but as it turned out that had not been the case with the viewers of the show. Ben had won the final by a huge margin and had also topped the vote in the previous seven weeks. It hadn’t only been me that had loved him. The bookies clearly hadn’t managed to find themselves privy to any voting leaks this year because they had it wrong from the start. Now I can look forward to buying tickets to see Ben Haenow but I will miss Fleur’s exotic bras!

Article by Sally Stacey