The beating mantra that runs through Britain’s Got Talent is: can you believe this? That unglamorous people are capable of doing something amazing? And there Simon Cowell is, on the tips of his Cuban heels, breaking into a slow, astonished clap. Is Amanda Holden crying a single tear? Well, no, obviously, but she’s at least pretending to. David Walliams is shouting “Come on!” as someone really hits a note. Friends who met in the NHS sing a cappella! Five ex-army lads break into operatic song! Alesha Dixon’s standing facing the crowd now, look, swelling them up into a roar. A dance troupe do something bombastic to the kind of remixes you only hear in gyms. Someone too nervous to ever be charismatic on stage absolutely smashes a West End standard. A dog with a great personality runs through cones.
Here’s a gymnast who can tie themselves up like a pretzel. Normally, I am fairly critical of nice, but something about Britain’s Got Talent gets to me: here are all these people, with their strange variety acts that they have absolutely nowhere to perform because nobody goes to piers or has loose change for street performers any more, earnestly doing that thing they do.
