Subtle? Stylish? No... but oh what a panto!

Updated: 18:14 EST, 13 December 2009

What's the dream? You tell me.

After 200,000 auditions, a blizzard of sequins and a million salt tears, in the end, X Factor 2009 all boiled down to one simple question: what's on the other side?

Ha! I jest, of course.

Gripping: Olly and Joe battled it out in a tense X-Factor final and had 40 million viewers on the edge of their seats

As a devoted X Factor fan who has been in it for the long haul, the only thing that mattered this weekend was who would finally win the talent show pop crown - Olly, Joe or Stacey?

The answer was teased out over two giant shows that dominated the Saturday and Sunday night television schedules.

Before a watching audience of nearly 40million, the battle-hardened trio of hopefuls strapped on their hurricane-strength lungs for one last time and fought it out to the bitter end.

Stacey Solomon, the Essex gal who put the oof! in goofy, was the first to go down shrieking. On Saturday she was voted out, despite a duet with Michael Buble and her superior sequin power.

Looking like a freshly shampooed Afghan hound from day one, Stacey had been my favourite all along.

However, even I began to tire of her shouty, tonsil-rattling, monomaniac approach to every single song. She had to go.

True to form, however, Solomon was gracious in defeat.

'This is the first night of the rest of my life,' she said, as she clip-clopped back to Dagenham in her spangly new shoes.

And then there were two. Would the final winner be Olly Murs, the big-lunged Essex geezer with the comedy knees?

Or Joe McElderry, the angelic Geordie half-pint with the blazing smile?

Like a cracker on Christmas day I was torn, pulled in opposite directions by forces beyond my control.

In the end, of course, the best man won - Joe.

As Simon Cowell himself said, this was the 'closest-ever' X Factor final. Right up until the last squeak, the result was as tight as Cheryl and Dannii's multi-way Spanx.

Indeed, support for both these pups - please, I'm talking about Olly and Joe - was colossal, both in their home towns and across the rest of the country.

In South Shields, McElderry's fans waved Go Joe! posters and practically exploded with joy every time he opened his mouth.

At a rally of Murs fans in Colchester, one of them kept waving a homemade sign which read: 'You're Immense'. It was supposed to be encouraging, I guess.

Yet there are many people, myself included, who have bathroom scales to remind us daily of that uncomfortable fact.

However, subtlety or tact are not words that anyone has ever associated with the X Factor.

In the six years the reality talent contest has been running in this country, it has become a bombastic new part of the festive landscape.

Even those who like to complain about it, or see its innocent pleasures as the end of civilization and proper music as we know it, seem to take a curdled and perverse enjoyment in their odium.

Most of the X Factor winners are forgotten within the year; how can that possibly herald the end of pop music?

Instead, I like to see the X Factor as a modern-day pantomime, complete with goodies and baddies, plus a recognisable cast of stock comedy characters who turn up year after year, such as Widow Twankey and Dandini.

Indeed, it wouldn't look a bit out of place if Cowell started slapping his velvet britches and suddenly had a hook instead of a right hand.

Or a balding parrot called Louie on his shoulder, who kept squawking: 'You owned the stage! You owned the stage!'

We can all join in, too.

There is even a raft of catchphrases we can shout out from the sofa, including: ' I don't think we have heard the best from you yet. You are the one to beat. That song was just too big for you. You are potentially world class. You are what this competition is all about. And not forgetting...you remind me of a young Mariah/Madonna or - in the case of McElderry - Tom Thumb.

Most of all, of course, the biggest cliche about the X Factor is that it is 'a journey'.

Well, since the show began back in the dim mists of autumn, we have all been on an incredible journey together.

For one special young man, however - one young man who has laughed, cried and bawled himself hoarse over the last three months - that journey is only just beginning.

Dermot O'Leary. What the hell are you going to do now?

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