Freak show impressario

Until Edwardian times, the freak show was a standard part of the entertainment scene. Not, admittedly, a high class part - but perfectly respectable. Since then we moved away from the freak show on the intellectual argument that it is degrading for those involved. But you don't make an entertainment that appeals to the gut lose its appeal by intellectualizing. And this is clearly something Simon Cowell understands as he has had a huge influence on bringing the freak show to prime time TV.

Cowell's X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent (or US spin-offs American Idol and America's Got Talent) are primarily freak shows. You can argue (and no doubt Cowell would) that they're talent shows, and the beautiful performers who made it to last weekend's X-Factor final were anything but freaks, but this misunderstands the nature of the freak show. It was always important to put any freakiness alongside beauty and talent - the freak show is very much about contrast, about beauty and the beast. For many viewers, the early auditions of these shows are more engaging than the talent-led finals - because that's where you get the real oddballs.

Perhaps the ultimate case in point is the huge success of Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent. She has a good voice - I'm not trying to take that away. But it's no better than that of thousands of classically trained singers. Literally thousands. What has propelled Boyle into having vast numbers of YouTube hits and an album that topped the charts is her appearance and her limitations. It's the contrast - the whole raison d'etre of the freak show.

I can't really dislike Simon Cowell for this. He is just giving the punters the bread and circuses they want. But it's a shame that in 100 years we haven't managed to move our aversion to the freak show from the head to the gut.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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