Critics seem to love to hate the X-Factor – but even they have to admit that Rak-Su are actually quite good

The band, with their song ‘Dimelo’, which sounds like being chased by angry cows then ran over by a San Paulo carnival float, have made terrifically good TV since late summer

The name Rak-Su sounds like something toxic you put down in the attic to stop rats eating your wiring – and that is the sort of solid gold Dad Joke which has reverberated around Britain’s cold, skint, post-Brexit living rooms for months (PA)

As predictably as Little Mix cavorting pant-free for over a quarter of their X Factor performance this Sunday was a media post-mortem following the ITV finale, stating its irrelevance as a cultural phenomenon. There is much joy in some quarters that in 2017, a mere 4.4 million viewers watched the somewhat adorable Rak-Su beat the Norwegian Cruises Adele-sound-a-like Grace Davies. Cowell is kaputt. Again. You’ve possibly heard this before in 2007, 2008 and each year since.

Trumpeting the X-Factor’s demise while resenting its stranglehold on Saturday night TV has been a part of my family’s weekend routine, as they snuggle up on sofas fully enjoying the damn thing, for at least the past decade.

Perhaps your family are the same? Can’t stand it, can’t stop watching. Or only watching for Matt Linnen, the swoonsome, crooning plasterer, but somehow getting swept up in watching Jesy from Little Mix’s gusset on HD, hoping her hoo-hah doesn’t get singed by the in-house pyro display.

In the modern age, I hold little stock in TV “ratings”. Their methodology seems shonky. According to ratings, BBC2 re-runs of Homes Under The Hammer – a man examining stained wood-chip in Slough – are enormously popular.

Meanwhile Rak-Su, with their song “Dimelo” – which sounds like being chased by angry cows then ran over by a San Paulo carnival float – have made terrifically good TV since late summer. Especially twinkle-eyed trackie-wearing Myles who everyone wants to sleep with… Cheryl Cole, Nicole Sherzingher… not myself, of course.

Ok, not at Boot Camp stage or the first live weeks, but by this weekend’s finale full X-Factor Stockholm Syndrome had set in and I’d have happily tolerated heavy petting. And if not Myles, even Mustafa – who is very much the Gary Barlow of the group, clearly there because he has a staff discount at JD Sports at the Watford Harlequin shopping centre where the band lovingly source all their outfits.

The name Rak-Su comes from the phrase “tracks vs suits” meaning “music and fun vs adult life”. If you are past 30 years old and you can read that without flobbering both nostrils, you aren’t alive. Rak-Su sounds like something toxic you put down in the attic to stop rats eating your wiring, and that, readers, is the sort of solid gold Dad Joke which has reverberated around Britain’s living rooms for months over cold, skint, post-Brexit winter nights.

In serious times, the X-Factor remains surface-level serious, with a dark underbelly of silly. It revels in inviting young, weird, pretentious, fabulously unpolished regional types into the nation’s living rooms in order to make parents furious and kids ecstatic.

If viewing figures may be petering out in this multi-platform media landscape, it’s worth remembering that X-Factor is still the only family show on Saturday TV in Britain attempting to appeal to a class-diverse, multicultural, cross-generational audience. Cowell is the only big player vaguely mimicking the sounds and sights of an afternoon spent in Topshop or faffing about on YouTube.

Compared to this, The Voice is a joke. It is a weak fart of a concept built on a gimmick which everyone forgets by week two. Next to X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, wonderful though it may be, is like foie gras being fed Reithian values. Strictly is a gilt-edged hetronormative yesterland of Seventies twirling. The best bit of Strictly is always wondering who might be shagging who in a clandestine extramarital manner.

If we could just go live on BBC1 from the Novotel London City South from 3pm most weekdays, after those really emotional long rehearsals where you cha-cha-cha until you forget your wedding vows, then believe me I’d watch this show with more enthusiasm.

Weirdly, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, a stale, unchanging format woven around animal cruelty and vomiting, is never, ever accused of being ready for the chop. Perhaps I’m A Celeb’s lack of Svengali-type Cowell figures at the helm means its fluctuating ratings offer no delicious schadenfraude for critics.

Regardless of today’s kvetching, winners Rak-Su have still doubtless woken this morning feeling on the brink of global fame. Or if they’re being realistic, domestic-based fame. Or at least a spot in Westfield Shopping Centre on a raised plinth banging through “Dimelo” as bemused onlookers scoff sugared giant pretzels.

Cowell’s promise of life-altering sums of money and Beyonce-style stardom seems flimsy nowadays. We the public are much less naive about the concept of success. It is no longer good enough for Cowell to say “I’ll make you a star, for I have the powers”, because at home, we sit on sofas thinking, “We’re the ones who download the singles and buy the tour tickets. We’ll be the gatekeepers of how famous you become.”

Sometimes I think the biggest prize on X-Factor is getting to the final of X-Factor. So Rak-Su, you bunch of wonderful, noisy, bloody idiots, enjoy every second. This could be as good as it gets.