Why I Will Never Understand News

Celebrities are bloody fun aren't they? I can't get enough of celebrities. I follow them all on Twitter, then just in case I miss anything that they post either in their sleep or in the other, oh, 20 minutes of the day that I'm not checking it, I can just log onto the website of a tabloid newspaper and find out all about them. I would be inconsolable if these websites stopped letting me know when Amy Childs has gone out partying, when Lady Gaga has worn some silly clothes, when Demi Moore is looking thin and when Brooklyn Beckham is eating Sushi.

I don't understand news. I get confused about which pieces of information are allowed to be put on a website and printed in a paper to become news. The boundaries between trashy gossip magazines and tabloid newspapers have blurred so much that I think it is genuinely affecting my vision. I have a degree in print journalism for goodness sake, and yet when I pick up a newspaper I can only stare at it with an expression that floats somewhere between confusion and utter terror. I didn't realise I spent three years learning about THIS.

In the last couple of weeks I have realised that I do not fit in with the tabloid demographic any more. The first sign was the shock news that Kim Kardashian had split up with her husband after just 72 days. I have absolutely no idea who or what Kim Kardashian is. I know she has a reality TV show, and I know she has a big bum. That is all. I couldn't possibly tell you why she has her own TV show or what gives her the right to have her every move shoved in front of my face in paper form. I must have missed the memo.

Then there is the unadulterated television hurricane that is The X-Factor. Aside from having a Twitter account that I check on weekend evenings, I have had absolutely no contact with the X-Factor this year. Last year was plenty enough for me. The only thing I know about this year's competition is that there was a boy called Frankie taking part in it.

I have read two newspaper articles and seen a few headlines about Frankie and his booting from the X-Factor, and I've come to a few conclusions. HE IS OUT OF CONTROL. He's like every single bad guy in every single action film all rolled into one super-evil warlord, completely bent on ruining Saturday and Sunday nights for absolutely everyone. If Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse had ever made babies, Frankie would be the outcome. He is a monster and he must be stopped.

Basically, Frankie is a bit of a lad. I don't particularly like lads, they are the sort of people who are too loud for my fragile ears on a Saturday night. They are the sort of people who give me abuse when I play Call of Duty online - but older. However, I cannot fault the way he has made the most of his 15 minutes of fame by trying to pull anything that looks at him. Credit where credit is due.

This happens every year during the X-Factor's live show stint. Somehow out of the hundreds of thousands of acts that apply each year, one slightly turdy one manages to slip through the net and make it nearly all the way to the final. Every year there is public outrage that they haven't been kicked out of the competition sooner, and then every year people who don't usually like the show hijack the voting in order to keep the one that everybody hates in the contest and further wind the nation up. Funnier still, it becomes news every single year. I will never understand journalism.