Celebrity gossip – Everyone Talks About It

You cannot enter the office, pub, high street shop, without someone talking about the X Factor. Dannii Minogue even rushed back to the judging panel to fend off Nicole Scherzinger from taking her place on the biggest show of the year.

X Factor still has another 8 weeks until the final and there is so much celebrity news being generated from the show. The previous week saw Gamu Nhengu booted off XFactor despite giving an outstanding performance and Cher Lloyd and Katie Waissel going through even though they did not finish theirs. Cheryl Cole wannabe Cher Lloyd has been in the papers since September, perhaps because she looks so much like Ms Cole (or should we be calling her Ms Tweedy now?), that maybe the paps were getting confused. One thing is for certain though: reality TV shows make celebrities out of the girls and boys next door over night. You just hope they have a PR rep from day one to make sure they are not doing or saying things that could put them in a bad light. Although of course, the paradox is the more celebrity gossip that in the papers about them, the higher their celebrity profile rises.

What is the fascination with reality TV shows that have viewers hooked? More than 19 million people watched Joe McElderry win the X Factor last December and this number could beaten this year when the X Factor Series 7 finale goes live. The winner of the show will enjoy super stardom, tours and sponsorship deals and will never have to worry about the poor state of their finances again.

But then for some this is not always the case. Leon Jackson, winner of X Factor 2007 has since been dropped by his record label and if you ask any fan of X Factor today they will probably have difficulty remembering him. Indeed, sometimes it is the runners up who actually do better than the winners. Alexandra Burke, who won in 2008, has sold 700,000 copies of her debut album Overcome, while JLS have sold 1.2 million copies of their debut album, called simply “JLS”. Well done boys.

Would it be cheeky to suggest that maybe it is not so much the winning that counts but how you actually performed in the series and your image that will lead to a longer term contract with a record deal? Perhaps not.