MANY of you will have noticed this year’s X Factor competition has started. With boot camp now over, viewers have a clear picture of who has reached the next stage at the judges houses.
Several million hours of singing and dancing will be broadcast on a Saturday night from now on.
There has been the usual singling out of individuals for special attention – Frankie Cocozza is a pin-up for the girls, the attention about his appearance completely overshadowing his good voice; 26-year-old Kitty Brucknell (flashing silver swimsuit) is an attention-hungry drama queen who the tabloids will be courting for tears and tantrums, but, unfortunately, 48-year-old Tai Chi instructor Goldie Cheung, who also made a big impression, has left the competition.
Star of the show so far for me is Jade Richards, from Buckhaven in Fife, who has an amazing voice to rival Adele and should be a contender.
Goth Jade has already received a great deal of media attention, apparently being obsessed with vampires, refusing an X Factor makeover, and is planning her next tattoo to add to the 14 she already has. Shocking indeed.
Nineteen-year-old Misha Bryan, of Manchester, also stands out in the competition with her strong voice and confrontational image reminiscent of Grace Jones.
Once surplus contestants are removed at the judges houses, the usual line-up of decent singers, nauseating boy bands with bad hair, and drama queens will be put through their paces in the run-up to Christmas.
Whether this year’s crop of performers will produce another singer to rival last year’s winner, Matt Cardle, and his yellow trousers – or a contestant as popular as novelty singer Wagner Carrilho, is another matter.
MOVE over Silkwood and The China Syndrome because Russian state nuclear company Rosatom has lent its support to a new film about enchanted love at a nuclear plant.
The presumably pro-nuclear film, entitled Atomic Ivan, tells the tale of vibrant, young nuclear scientist Vanya and his sweetheart, Tanya. Vanya comes from a nuclear family in a closed city (perhaps like Thurso in the 1970s) and is keen to experience personal relationships.
Snigirev Dobrygin and Julie Gregory take the leads under director Vasily Barkhatov, who is using family and nuclear culture to explore themes of commitment, stability and continuity between generations.
Rosatom is reported to have said nuclear work is portrayed as prestigious and exciting, as complicated and intricate as personal relationships, and comes with extensive training and great responsibility.
Leningrad and Kalinin nuclear plants in Russia were used in the filming of the epic.
One of the aims of the film is said to be to dispel fears and prejudices with irony, and end with a warm human story about love of the peaceful atom. Awwww! Let’s hope this film also dispels the incredulity created by Russia’s Miss Atom beauty contest, where women in the nuclear industry strip off and pose like a crazy Barbie to gain plaudits from male colleagues in the nuclear industry.
One day Dounreay may feature in such a film, Atomic Donald, where the protagonist nuclear worker
part-time crofter fights to keep his hay bales from rolling away after a twilight-hours explosion caused by extremely powerful baking soda.Will Donald be able to rescue his bales before the sheep are crushed? And who will rescue his sweetheart, scientist and exotic incomer Lise Meitner, from the evil clutches of the aliens from Pluto that rule the plant?
The plot could conclude on County Show day when fragments of spent fuel are found in floral displays in the SWRI tent. Donald and Lise are sent to retrieve the errant particles and decide to run away together to escape the aliens and their baking soda. They catch a ferry to Orkney at sunset and decide to spend their lives working a croft on Westray.
FROM Atomic Ivan to the The Lost Boys, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is reporting a large lost buoy weighing one tonne has made its way from Newfoundland in Canada to an oil platform 75km off Shetland. The lost buoy went missing during Hurricane Igor in September last year.
Oil standby vessel Grampian Frontier picked up the large, yellow buoy which had floated into the 500m exclusion zone around the Clair platform. Shetland coastguard investigated the serial numbers on the buoy, via the Receiver of Wreck, and found it had travelled all the way from Canada.
MCA Receiver of Wreck Alison Kentuck said: “Lost data buoys such as this one are actually considered to be lost property rather than wreck. However, even when they have been off-station for such a long time, they might still contain valuable scientific data, and the Receiver of Wreck will always try to get them back to their owner.
“It seems that this one may have survived a hurricane and travelled a considerable distance, so it will be fascinating to see what oceanographic data it might have captured on its adventure.”
Of course, if the current UK Government has its way, there will be no coastguards and no coastguard vessels to protect our seas anyway. In fact, with the UK Government’s position cutting the coastguard service and the Royal Navy fleet, you could almost assume the insular UK Government has forgotten we are actually living on an archipelago.
Corrina Thomson is on Facebook and Twitter @corrinathomson
