I found myself slap-bang in the middle of an accidental X Factor party on Saturday night, during a family trip to Center Parcs. After a long day spent mostly on the water-rapids at the swimming plaza, all nine of us settled down to watch the first live show.

We faced problems from the outset when subtitles for the deaf (that none of the children would admit to having put on) wouldn’t turn off. As it was a live show the subtitles were about 30 seconds behind what was actually being said making it twice as annoying, though once the music began we’d stopped moaning about them and began ranting about the contestants.

The first act to receive our verbal lashings were FYD. Their choice of song (‘Billionaire’ by Travie McCoy feat. Bruno Mars) did nothing to dispel the thought that they were just fame-hungry wannabes and each of us agreed with Louis, for once, when he said that they’re probably better dancers than singers.

Unfortunately that was just about the only thing we did agree on. From that point onwards the discussions mainly involved at least three people shouting “Be quiet!” at the rest of us as we yelled “Rubbish! He/she’s never going to win!”. The only other discussion running was through the group of children (nine, eleven, thirteen and fourteen years old respectively), who after watching Diva Fever perform realised that they were gay and began dissecting each other contestants’ sexuality. The reasoning behind many of their decisions were ridiculous, mostly because they thought it was so funny to say “He’s gay too!” that from that point on, in their eyes, all the contestants were gay.

After Matt ‘the hat’ Cardle performed a cover of the Kelly Rowland/David Guetta hit ‘When Love Takes Over’ and we had shut up for the two minutes it lasted, we all agreed that he should win on that performance alone. Well, apart from the two younger children who reckoned we “only like him because of his hat”.

As soon as the judges started judging again we immediately became as loud and shouty as before. Two hours and nine pairs of damaged eardrums later, the show ended and I was thoroughly exhausted by the whole experience. Apparently people do this every week. I won’t be.