The question is, which one is the comedian?

There were two interesting things about Marty Stein, my art director in the mid-60's - or at any rate two I'm talking about here.

First, he was the fastest guy ever at churning out grease-pencil roughs.

This was useful because in those days it helped if you could draw. If you could draw fast, even better. Marty could churn out layouts faster than I could have ideas. Nether of us was much good, to be honest, but there you are.

Second, back home in New York he once had Andy Warhol working for him, drawing shoes.

You will recall that Warhol said that one day everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. This is pretty much how long most of the successful contestants on the X factor last. I should tell you, by the way, that I don't really like the X factor and American Idol and all those shows, but they do exercise a grisly fascination, rather like those quiz shows where people answer trick questions like, "What is your first name?"

Take, for instance the man above grinning like a hyena - a Brazilian called Wagner. I caught sight (and unfortunately sound) of him by accident the other night, and was struck by his resemblance to the more serious looking man below, an excellent comedian called Bill Bailey.

Good luck to Wagner, but he does to music what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans. I listened to him in disbelief. Any similarity between the noise he was making and the tune it was based on was extremely distant.

The question is, why did none of the judges mention this? Are they all deaf?

To be fair to him though, he was bloody hilarious. Mr. Bailey must look to his laurels.