Which side of the fence do you sit ?

The, ahem, race for the long since forgotten about Christmas number one slot is on. It looks like being Rage Against The Machine losing out by some margin to some faceless nobody off X Factor. And who won it this year, some spotty student who couldn’t even remember when George Michael was famous for more than falling asleep in the middle of the road. He’ll get a million pound record contract, release an album of incredibly dull MOR ballads that bored housewives will buy in their drones before being dumped by his record company as soon as his balls drop, left to tour with whatisname, that bloke who won it the other year, and that thin girl, you know the one, what was she called again ?

But before deciding which single to spend your hard earned 69p, first a helpful Q&A.

• Can RATM pip the faceless spotty prepubescent to the number one slot ? Yes, but only if you download ‘Killing In The Name’ from a countable source.



• Should you bother, isn’t being told to buy one single exactly the same as being told to buy another ? Well, if you buy RATM you’re sending a clear message to Simon Cowell that ‘F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me’. However, you’re then sending out a clear message to some nobody sat in a darkened bedroom with clearly too much spare time on his hands that ‘Yes, actually, I’ll do everything YOU tell me’



• Won’t buying the X-Factor single make me look like a right cock-end ? Yes. Yes it will.



• Will buying RATM single make me look cool to the groovy chicks, enabling me to finally lose my virginity over Christmas to that stuck in the nineties grunge chick down the road who hasn’t figured out yet that leaving your hair in that mock dreadlock style actually makes you reek more than a sewage farm in July ? Yes it will, I promise.

So there you have it, concrete proof of what you need to do. Go ahead, buy the RATM single, several times if you want. It might not change the world, it might not make ITV cancel X-Factor next year, it might even get you laid (*) but at least you won’t look like a dick by buying the X-Factor record.

(*) The chances of you getting laid while listening to RATM can go down as well as go really, really down.