Why I like Jedward (and am thus a bit of a pretentious arsehole)

Now is probably not a good time to be John and Edward Grimes, what with being dropped from their label after just one single and frequently ridiculed by the 'cool kids' of the British public and all.

I must admit, I wouldn't want to be them right now. I would, however, be more than prepared to take my hat off to the pair of them and say 'Well done, Sirs.'

Why? Because throughout the course of their sudden rise (and impending fall from) to stardom, the boys did the one thing no other contestant on a TV talent show has managed to do properly; they got people's attention.

More specifically, they got my attention.

Look, I get it; as a 25 year-old male who lists his favourite music as Metallica, Counting Crows and Johann Pachelbel, I'm not exactly the X-Factor's target audience.

Yet despite this, I know more than I would like to about Jedward, their performances and all their associated celeb-tosh. I know, for example, that they were on the last series of X-Factor, which is more than I could say for anybody else who took part in that show.

I couldn't tell you who won it, nor could I tell you the name of anybody else who took part. In fact, if all the previous contestants from X-Factor (apart from Jedward) came round to my house for a party, I'd be so unfamiliar with all of them that I would assume I'd somehow ended up in the wrong house and promptly leave.

Not so with Jedward. Out of the scores of pop-star wannabes who flood these shows, they are they only two who really stood out, and who I thus recognise, because they did something different.

Whether it was different in a good way or not is not for me to say; the simple fact that they did it is good enough for me.

I hate to sound like some pretentious arsehole, but a lot of entertainment bores me because it just seems like the same old stuff regurgitated over and over. I'm not just having a dig at X-Factor here either, it's the same with a lot of the so-called alternative music favoured by those who deem themselves too cool for TV talent shows.

Something happens (be it X-Factor or Arctic Monkeys), it's successful, tonnes of people repeat it hoping to repeat that success and before you know it, there's no need to pay any attention to any of it any more because it's already been done.

Two Irish lads with big hair singing Ice, Ice Baby may not be the most sophisticated form of entertainment there is, nor is it necessarily the sort of thing I'm usually prone to enjoy, but at least it's different and catches people's attention.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like Jedward...

Well, OK, there's another reason too, which is this:

Usually, when I wake up in a morning, my hair sticks up at least a good several feet above my head. It looks silly, but I know that all I have to do is look at a picture of John and Edward, and things won't seem so bad.