The Cook report

David Cook casts his eye over last week’s TV, and finds it more unpalatable than a geriatric on X-Factor

If there was ever an advert for shooting yourself the day before your 60th birthday, it was Young@Heart (Wednesday, 9pm, Channel 4). It was meant to be uplifting, but this feature-length (i.e. far too long) documentary about a choir of US pensioners covering contemporary artists – James Brown, Rolling Stones, Coldplay – managed instead to simply bore the viewer into an early grave, with half the choir probably following on behind. Really, while the idea of a crowd of rock’n’roll pensioners might sound sweet, and yes, you’d probably go and see them for a laugh while half-cut on cider and LSD at Glastonbury, actually listening to a couple of dozen octogenarians covering Sonic Youth – Sonic Youth! – makes Jive Bunny sound positively palatable. Chorus leader Bob – looking like a cross between Jesus and Bob Geldof (unlike Bob Geldof, who thinks he is Jesus) tried to inspire the crowd by going ‘Yeah! Great!’ every five minutes, but there’s only so much fun you can have watching an old man massacre the first line of I Feel Good time and time again.

Speaking of music being massacred, Simon Cowell, we beg you, please beat Ray to death before he opens his mouth again. (X-Factor, Saturday, 6.25pm, ITV). Forget the MacDonald Bros, they’re merely rubbish - Ray is actually quite frightening. Really. Look at his slicked back hair, those cold, dead eyes, that stuck-on perma-grin. He is the walking, talking, singing Damian. He is Satan, or if not Satan, then his obnoxious little brother. Please, somebody call Gregory Peck and bring the torture to an end