LAST weekend 11 million people in this country sat down to watch one single TV show – 10 million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them probably loved every minute it. Then there was me...

Maybe it was because I watched it on the catch-up thing the next day and I’d already heard about the acts, or maybe it is because I know too much about how TV shows manipulate what we see for entertainment purposes, but last weekend’s return of Britain’s Got Talent made me angry.

It wasn’t the dancing dogs, the eyeball popping feller, or the dancing grandad that upset me; it was when one of the judges, reacting to the stand-out performance of the night, said “I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect much from you, to be honest”.

Aargh!

That comment made me want to scream for two reasons. Number one, the judges DO know what to expect, because the acts have already auditioned for someone far less famous and they have notes about them in front of them, and secondly, because I couldn’t quite put my finger on whether or not that was the worst compliment I’ve ever heard paid, or just a plain old insult.

Now, If you didn’t see the show, 19-year-old Michael Collings wowed the entire audience when he sang Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.

His voice was brilliant, his guitar playing was great, the boy clearly has a lot of talent.

But what really bugged me is how the (now obligatory) back story painted him as an uncultured bumpkin living in a caravan with his parents.

They even managed to squeeze in an unusually large amount of close-ups of the tracksuit he was wearing. The same tracksuit was also ridiculed by the judges as he started to perform.

I know what the show is trying to do, they’re trying to find another Susan Boyle and by playing on Collings’s lack of social skills and media training, the hope is we will love him even more.

The point is, he’s good. In fact he’s really good. He’s so good even one of my incredibly cheap colleagues who never pays for anything if she can get it for free, says she would buy his album tomorrow.

I guess this is what makes me uncomfortable. Am I naïve to think it would have been nice if someone from the production crew had advised him to put on a nice pair of trousers and a clean shirt, or even God forbid, removed the bit of the film where he couldn’t remember the name of the Royal Variety Show?

I can’t help but think it would have been nice to see the young feller given the chance to look as good as he sounded for his worldwide television debut.