Is anyone else a bit fed up of TV presenters telling us that the future of their contestants depends on us? Whether it is singing wanabees or celebrity dancers, it seems that they just cannot manage without us.

This appears somewhat ironic given the fact that they present us with a panel of experts all vying to give us their opinions.

‘If you don’t want your favourite to leave, then pick up the phone now’ the presenter informs the audience presuming that a) We have a favourite and b) That we care enough to spend our money in order to secure their future.

Perhaps if they had a ‘none of the above’ option I might be more tempted to take up the responsibility that they so freely offer me.

I expressed this thought to Mrs M and she suggested that I was looking at the whole thing a little too negatively. She even intimated that I might feel more at home watching Grumpy Old Men.

Perhaps she has a point, but I can’t help feeling that these programmes bring out the worst in me.

I wonder how long it will be before newscasters start asking us to vote on which headlines they cover. Or when weather reporters start running a phone-in competition so that we can decide the kind of weather we should have.

This all sits well with the media obsession of getting the public’s opinion on virtually every subject you can name. They start by asking a few well-educated professionals to start the debate rolling. Then before you know it they are on the streets to ask Doris from Baildon what she thinks about genetic modification.

Not that people christened Doris, nor indeed the residents of Baildon, don’t have the right to speak – it’s just that I’m not sure whether either label qualifies you to have a useful viewpoint on multi-cellular organisms.

Perhaps the future of genetic engineering is more important than The X Factor (although you wouldn’t know that from the viewing figures) but I don’t really care what Doris thinks about either and I am quite sure that my thoughts are equally useless in such things.

I expressed this opinion to Mrs M, and she replied: “You are making the huge assumption that Doris doesn’t have a Phd in such matters or that she doesn’t work as a record producer.”

I detected that she was offering a little too much sarcasm, so I explained to her why she was missing the point, but she was too busy listening to Simon Cowell destroy another young hopeful’s dreams.

If you want my unqualified opinion, if it wasn’t for genetics, the X Factor wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is.