Linus was smart. Maybe he had good parents, who told him they loved him. But Linus knew he was good enough as he was. He didn't need to be celebrated or want Lydia Grant's advice from Fame, the TV series from the early 1980s. "You got big dreams! You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying, in sweat."

Sweat? Some of the kids on these shows wouldn't know sweat if it was presented to them on a Petri dish. Those auditioning on X Factor think fame will make them happy and wonder, if they can't be a singer, maybe they could be an actor or a TV presenter. They're not fussy.

They leave auditions cursing Simon Cowell. Talented or not, fame is their God-given right.

They confuse self-belief and selfdelusion.

On X Factor during the week, Alisha, with a pink Minnie Mouse bow in her hair, said, "I just want to be someone."

X Factor is a celebration of the judges, the Greek gods who play with the fate of contestants like pawns. (The publicity surrounding Louis Walsh's temporary dismissal and Sharon Osbourne's threat to walk out shows you who are the real stars. ) They laugh at the contestants and bulge their eyes in horror when they open their mouths. Simon Cowell folds his arms and glares at them with contempt. (Yes, he who made his TV debut as a contestant on Sale of the Century; watch it on YouTube. ) Osbourne told Beverley after her performance of "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston (another cautionary tale):

"Beverley, this show was made for someone like you. You're a working mum and this show will make your dreams come true."

Such statements should carry a disclaimer or health warning, or preferably both.

I will admit an unhealthy addiction to Cycle Eight of America's Next Top Model, which should be called America's Next Top Tranny, judging by Tyra Banks's increasingly enormous hair weaves and giant ego. Naomi Campbell allegedly bullied Tyra during her early days modelling.

It's hard to know whether this show is Tyra's way of giving back f or getting back.

As usual, this episode started with a recap from a breathless Tyra: "A phone call from home [clip of Jael: "Oh, no!"] brought Jael the tragic news of a friend's death." The girls shout "Tyra Mail!" when they get news of their weekly photo challenge.

This week's theme would be different kinds of death and suicide. How could the producers be so insensitive? Did they plan it? Jael couldn't believe it.

As Tyra stood in front of the girls at the judging panel flanked by "fashion icon" Twiggy and "noted photographer" Nigel Barker, she said, as she always does, "Two girls stand before me but I have only one photo in my hand." I half-expected an alien to unzip itself from her body and devour the girl who was being sent home.

Tyra told super-skinny Jaslene, a cha-cha Latina from Chicago, Illinois and the most likeable of the bunch: "Culture is beautiful!

But so much earrings, Jaslene.

You just can't help yourself!" It's worth noting that Tyra was at this moment wearing a pair of hooped earrings the size of saucers and a massive hair weave. (Culture is beautiful, yet Tyra still can't bring herself to have her natural afro. ) Adrianne Curry, the winner of ANTM Cycle One in 2003, who 9has been cut from the opening credits showing previous ANTM winners for criticising Tyra and the show, could be imprisoned forever in Tyra's hair weave, if she hadn't already struck out on her own. Back then, Tyra told her, "You are the future!" But Curry was a former cocaine and heroin addict, so it was unlikely that Revlon would allow her to become their face. However, Adrianne picked herself up and went on to star on The Surreal Life and her own reality show, My Fair Brady, after hooking up with Christopher Knight, who played Peter Brady on The Brady Bunch.

She's still my ANTM all-star.

In Remembering Lena Zavaroni, a gripping piece of vintage TV, a nine-year-old girl in a blue babydoll dress with pig tails and bucked teeth showed us the awesome power of her lungs on a 1974 episode of Opportunity Knocks: "If they could see me now/That little gang of mine/Fancy gowns and drinkin' fancy wine!" She won that talent show and left her working class family and Scottish council estate in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute for a new life in London to live with her manager Dorothy Solomon, who comes across in this documentary as a cool, selfregarding, fearsome, unrepentant and pitiless woman.

Lena developed anorexia nervosa aged 13, attempted a comeback in her 20s and, in 1999 aged 35, died of pneumonia after complications from a self-elected lobotomy. Writer Andrew O'Hagan lamented, "Fame sets up a notion of special-ness you spend your whole life trying to regain f Lena represented a whole lot of dreaming." X Factor and Top