Britain's Got Talent - The semi-finalists

By Jason Wright (Entertainment Expert)

IT HAS been a very controversial and slated series so far.  However, regardless of the criticism, the semi-finals week of Britain’s Got Talent 2011 are still expected to draw high viewing figures and publicity as the battle to win a place at this year’s Royal Variety Performance heats up.  Last night, on the eve of the semi-finals, the new look judging panel of Amanda Holden, David Hasslehoff and Michael McIntyre announced which 40 acts would participate in these five live shows which in turn will decide who competes in next Saturday’s grand final.

     Out of those lucky to compete, this year’s line-up seems to be completely mismatched with several great acts axed for those who are just wrong and don’t have any kind of talent at all.  Despite this, the judges are somewhat convinced that this is the best field yet, that they decided to have a few acts perform again before finalising who should continue in the competition and who shouldn’t. Eventually, this is the final 40 they settled on;

The Semi-Finalists

ABYSS (Streetdance Troupe)

ANGELA & TEDDY (Dog Act)

ANTONIO POPEYE (Eye Popper)

BRUCE SISTAZ (Martial Arts Act)

CIRCUS OF HORRORS (Daredevil Act)

DANCE ANGELS ELITE (Dance Troupe)

DAVID & KAREN (Illusionist Duo)

DONELDA GUY (Dog Act)

EDWARD REID (Nursery Rhyme Singer)

ENCHANTMENT (Acrobatic Troupe)

FOLLOW THE RIGHT PATH (Rap Duo)

GAY & ALAN (Bell Players)

GIRLS ROC (Burlesque Dance Troupe)

HERBIE ARMSTRONG (Singer)

JAI McDOWALL (Singer)

JAMES HOBLEY (Ballet Dancer)

JAY WORLEY (Singer)

JEAN MARTYN (Pianist)

JESSICA HOBSON (Singer)

JOE OAKLEY (BMX Stunt Rider)

LES GIBSON (Impressionist)

LORNA BLISS

MARAWA (Hula Hoopist)

MEXICAN MAYHEM (Comedy Dog Act)

MICHAEL COLLINGS (Singer/Guitarist)

MR & MRS (Singing Duo)

NATHAN WYBURN (Artist)

NEW BOUNCE (Vocal-Dance Troupe)

OUT OF THE BLUE (Vocal-Dance Troupe)

PAUL GBEGBAJE (Pianist)

PIPPA & BUDDY (Dog Singing Act)

RAZY GOGONEA (Breakdancer)

RONAN PARKE (Singer)

STEVEN HALL (Dancer)

STUART ARNOLD (Terminator Impersonator)

TED & GRACE (Singing Duo)

THE CELTIC COLLEENS (Blacklight Dance Troupe)

TWO AND A HALF MEN (Dance Trio)

UP & OVER IT (Hand Dancers)

WACHIRAPORN TIRPAK (Entertainer)

      Overall, the list can certainly be a lot better than it has been but it doesn’t mean that competition won’t be a complete bore, it still promises to be a fierce as ever.

      The semi-finals get underway tonight at 7:30pm on ITV1 and ITV1 HD.  The acts will of course now not only have to impress the judges, the audience but now also the voting public and, the return of….Simon Cowell!

Twitter vs Facebook - The Facts & Milestones

The debate is bound to rage on: Which social networking giant is really the best?  Some will prefer to Tweet, others prefer Farmville; tastes will depend on whoever you associated yourself with.  However, with Twitter having recently celebrated its 20^th billionth tweet – just days after Facebook notched up its 500^th millionth member, here are some interesting facts about the two dominant leaders in social networking.

Facebook

Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg – whilst he was studying a Psychology course at Harvard University.  In 2006, Zuckerburg rejected a $1billion takeover offer from Yahoo.  One year later, he sold a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for £117million.  This year, figures suggest that Facebook is estimated to make $1billion.  Users post videos, pictures, status updates and pictures on their own personal profiles.  They connect with their friends via Facebook Chat and can have total control on who has access to personal information.  Facebook makes most of its money by targeting advertising to certain individual’s likes and dislikes.  Statistics suggest that Facebook users will spend around eight billion minutes on the site every day, and they send about a billion messages via Facebook chat.  It is almost impossible to tell whether famous people are using the site – fan pages are more likely to pop up.  Recently, a tribute page to the UK’s most wanted man, Raoul Moat was set-up.  ‘RIP Raoul Moat You Legend!’ attracted 30,000 fans and received serious condemnation from David Cameron.  It has since been removed.  A campaign to get the 1992 song ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage against the Machine was successful in December 2009 for the coveted prize of Christmas No.1.  It beat ‘The Climb,’ by UK X-Factor winner Joe McElderry, in a bid to put an end to Simon Cowell’s domination of the Xmas No.1.

MY VIEW OF FACEBOOK: I joined Facebook back in July 2007, after being sent a friend recommendation.  Honestly, I didn’t think it would catch on, I hadn’t even heard of it before then.  However, I spend a load of time on Facebook and despite receiving some criticism of late – some of it deserved, it will remain king of the social networking world in my view.

Twitter

Twitter was created in 2006 by work buddies Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey.  It started initially as a side project to a blogging website.  There is no source of revenue so far for Twitter, with many waiting to see how it will generate profit.  People write short updates called ‘Tweets,’ of 140 characters or less.  These are posted to your profile/blog and sent to all of your followers.  In 2007, about 5,000 tweets were sent a day, with that increasing to 300,000 messages per day in 2008.  Famous celebrities who regularly tweet for their millions of fans include Jamie Olivier, Alan Carr, Dannii Minogue, Amanda Holden, Tony Blair, Kaya Scodelario, Stephen Fry, Lily Allen and Barack Obama.

MY VIEW OF TWITTER: I joined Twitter last October, as it was an expected requirement of my first year Journalism course at The University of Northampton.  To be honest, I rarely use it, although I will pop on from time-to-time to see what my friends and celebrities I’m following, and post the occasional updates, normally about this website.  Twitter is not my favourite site, but is a nice back-up to have, should I require it and it is one hundred times better than my MySpace account, which I closed down this summer due to lack of activity.   

Britain's Got Talent - Has It Reached It's Peak?

Saturday night saw the curtain draw on the ITV hit primetime show, Britain’s Got Talent.  As ever, the final was as captivating as ever, and it drew one of the greatest live performances ever seen, by the winners, gymnastic artists Spelbound.

Spelbound’s performance was absolutely stunning, inch-perfect and was summed up by judge, Amanda Holden saying they would ‘perfect to open the 2012 Olympic Games.’  Series four of the show though show rapid signs of decline, which has left a few to question whether it has reached its peak?

Firstly, Saturday’s final drew figures of just over 14million viewers.  Not too bad, but it was a staggering 5.2million less than the 2009 final.  ITV were expecting a hit, but surely not quite as steep as that.  The audition round also failed to draw in the audience crowds, which suggests that the normal people are getting a bit bored with the show.

Secondly, the judging has gone very stale on the show.  No wonder why Simon Cowell has already decided to not do the audition round next year.  At times, the other two judges, Holden and former editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan were putting acts through just to annoy Simon.  When Louis Walsh stood in, whilst Cowell came down with the flu, the Irishman allowed some shocking acts through into the judges’ selection stage.  The semi-finals highlighted this, with the first two on the road: Last Monday and Tuesday, full of dreary, drippy acts that simply had no talent whatsoever.  It was all a bit of a joke.  Especially Holden, who seemed to love everything and almost throw herself at any bloke around her, she seemed pretty desperate.  Perhaps it’s time she was replaced, because although she maybe a top-quality actress, her criticising judging skills are far less to be desired. 

Thirdly, without Susan Boyle, the show was always going to struggle.  I think some were expecting to see one of the contestants produce a ‘SuBo’ moment like last year.  That was simply never going to happen, as she was a ‘one in a million’ contestant.  Largely, because of the staggering media interest last year.  Again, it was interesting to see the lack of media coverage the show got this year.  Maybe the critics are tired of the same old routines.  It must be noted on my Facebook and Twitter pages, that whereas everyone was talking about the show on their statuses in 2009, there was a lack of this when I explored this social networking buzz on Saturday night.  Lastly, Ant & Dec’s dry-witted humour has always been funny and a joy to watch, but sometimes it went far over the top in the last series just gone by.  You can’t really ditch the pair, simply because ITV can’t afford to lose them, but at times, I even found the Geordie duo to be fairly tiresome to watch.  The humour they portrayed on Wednesday night, after the murders in Cumbria wasn’t very satisfying.  Okay, I understand that the show must go on, as must the acts.  However, things could have been toned down a little, especially with the traumatic events going on last week.

On the positive side, there was plenty of talent in Saturday’s final and the final ten acts, were the right ten to make the final.  Twist & Pulse were surprising and creditable runners-up, considering they went first in the running order, normally a significant disadvantage in previous finals.  Drummer Kieran Gaffney was third, as he bounced back brilliantly from being rejected at the auditions stage in 2009.  Other highlights on Saturday night were 40-year old Christopher Stone’s opera voice.  He is surely destined for a career in the West End, rather than the accounting job he currently has.  Another act, which will have received a lot from this programme, is impressionist Paul Burling.  Burling, a former failure on the holiday park tour, was a revelation with his celebrity impersonations.  He was unlucky to miss out on a top three spot, but definitely has a lot of potential for the future now.

Although Saturday’s final ended up being a joy to watch, the series in general has been a major disappointment and similar to Dancing on Ice this year, showed minor cracks and signs of its age.  Simon Cowell has already said that a revamp is needed and I feel it does need some major tweaking, to win back the people and especially, the media.  It wasn’t a diabolical watch, but changes will have to be made, maybe some controversial ones, to keep Britain’s Got Talent afresh.  Otherwise, I am totally convinced that it already might have reached its peak performance.