Frankie Cocozza: why was he really sacked from The X Factor?
The X Factor star was clearly there for entertainment value rather than talent. But was he dumped for breaking the 'golden rule' – or to provide headlines for the ailing show?
Frankie Cocozza performing on The X Factor on 29 October Photograph: Ken Mckay/Ken McKay/Rex Features
When the obituaries of The X Factor are written – a moment that has seemed to be speeding near during the current series' talent-free and viewer-deserted run – memorialists will gleefully seize on one detail: the explanation from producers that Frankie Cocozza, who the producers sacked from the series on Tuesday night, had to go for breaking the show's "golden rule".
Frankie's aberration was not to be a tone-deaf exhibitionist who, at the audition, gave fair warning of what the producers were getting by exposing a bum-cheek supposedly tattooed with the names of holiday sexual conquests.
Nor was the sin of the diminutive walking advert for Autotune to perform so abysmally each week that even judge and mentor Gary Barlow bizarrely appeared to admit that he was being kept in the contest for reasons other than ability. Barlow, a week after saving the cheeky shrieker from elimination by public vote, declared that he should have got rid of him because his performance was so terrible. The logical conclusion is that, at least on that occasion, a judge was making the calculation that bad singers make good TV.
No, the ultimate Cowell commandment that Cocozza stands accused of breaking was reportedly to be overheard boasting backstage about a coke-fuelled sex session.
While few will summon much sympathy for someone whose ambition ran so far ahead of his ability, it is hard not to think that an implosion of some kind from Cocozza was predictable from the moment the panel chose him as a contestant – and that he may even have been picked for this reason.
TV talent shows are a branch of soap opera and are cast with similar attention to stereotype. The opening programmes of each series of The X Factor, when the contestants are selected, makes use of musically deluded people and/or eccentrics to provide cruel comedy as an interlude between the declaration of the genuine contenders. The eventual competitors also carefully fit pre-arranged categories: Potential Payday (2010 finallists One Direction, 2008 finallists JLS), Working-Class Hero (2009 winner Joe McElderry), Shy Angel (2008 winner Alexandra Burke) and Bad-Ass: last year's finalist Cher Lloyd and, this year, Cocozza.
During what will now stand as Frankie's final appearance last weekend, presenter Dermot O'Leary revealed, with mock-parental sternness, that the non-singer was appearing after having managed only half an hour's sleep. Even at the time, viewers didn't need a pharmacology degree to guess that he may not have achieved that feat on protein shakes. The producers are officially "disappointed" but viewers may suppose that the 18-year-old behaved exactly according to form.
In any X Factor, there is a careful balance between acts who may be good for Simon Cowell's record companies and those who will enliven proceedings, a group to which Cocozza belongs. One of the frog-voiced wannabes, who would normally have provided giggles at the audition stages, was this year let through, presumably to provide comedy and controversy. And he has.
Cynics will also note that the consequence of Cowell Inc's fit of showbiz morality was to put The X Factor back on the front page of the Sun and other tabloids, a position it once claimed by right but which so far has been more elusive during this current dull run. And now whatever solution Cowell shouts down a transatlantic telephone to this weekend's absence of a contender – presumably the return of a voted-off hopeful – will give the next edition an interest it previously lacked.
Cocozza's expulsion represents another acceleration in the rock life-cycle. Even in the recent past, a star singer or band usually lasted a few years before losing the plot and then their record contract. With The X Factor, Cowell got the gap between centre of attention and Jobcentre down to a few months. In this case, the performer has compressed the events of a whole career – debut, fame, front-page scandal, sacking by label – into a few weeks.
Such is the corrupted nature of celebrity now that, even despite his inability to sing, Cocozza, fuelled by notoriety, probably would be a reasonable commercial proposition for at least one album. Surely even Cowell wouldn't have the brass neck to offer a recording contract to someone kicked off his TV show, but, given the narcotic history of pop music, it would be hard for Cocozza to be exiled permanently by this scandal. Like Jedward, the joke-irritant factor on the 2009 series, he may yet turn hopelessness into gold.
More than a decade ago, Nick Bateman was kicked out of the first series of Big Brother for "breaking the rules" by cheating to gain advantage. Subsequently, "Nasty Nick" proved to have understood the true spirit of the show. In the same way, Cocozza represents not an aberration from the standards of The X Factor but a perfect advertisement for them.
While teenagers, in and out of showbiz, would be better off without cocaine, there is still a stench around what is now apparently the show's official code. Competitors can be talentless prats who are clearly kept in the competition purely to enliven a dreary series but the one thing they must never do is to get caught up in a sex-and-drugs scandal at a time when the show desperately needs publicity. If that is the "golden rule", then The X Factor really is in need of the silver bullet.
Mark Lawson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 November 2011 17.59 GMT
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