By all traditional measures, we are now at the height of X Factor fever. The mixed bag that is the auditions, the posturing of boot camp, the sweeping wide shots at the judges’ houses are long behind us and now we are fast headed for the final showdown.

But while Simon and Louis’s bitter one-upmanship and Dannii’s increasingly tawdry hair extensions are keeping us more than entertained, the Web Watcher is already looking back fondly at the contestants who didn’t make it. You see, while the live shows are a Petri dish for tension and high emotion, they deny the belly laughs of the auditions. In this angst-ridden time of impending recession and winter darkness, it is Web Watcher’s public duty to provide you with the worst ever X Factor audition videos.

Remember Robert? He worked in a chicken factory and, during the first series of X Factor, sang the Bee Gees’ aptly named Tragedy in the most terrifying falsetto ever unleashed. Not put off by the slack jaws of the judges, the karaoke enthusiast then gave a rendition of Aqua’s Barbie Girl, complete with imitations of both Barbie and Ken. Watch the madness.

The 2006 audition of the sweet, open-faced Agnes evoked a confusing mix of empathy and mirth. Her version of the Roxette ballad It Must Have Been Love was so earnest . . . if only her accent and wavering voice hadn’t caused her to resemble a sheep. That all-important first line morphed from “Lay a whisper” to “Lay a whisbaaa”. She battled on through the judges’ laughter to belt out the chorus: “it’s over now”. And it was.

This year, the dreadlocked, holistic vocal coach Ariel entered the audition room with aggression, left it hurling abuse and in between delivered a performance that took in heavy metal, opera and, er, a lion’s roar. As she advised the judges: “It is an academic construction. It is not a song.”

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