Pet Shop Boy and all round good egg Neil Tennant has launched a swingeing attack on Simon Cowell and his sinister kecks.

Revealing that he'd only tuned into X Factor because Cheryl Cole was a judge, Tennant complained that the show was "basically people singing Whitney, Mariah and maybe Elton. Why don't they have, say, a new-wave week? Or 80s electro week? If it's not power ballads then it was a narrower version of disco. What bugs me is that Simon Cowell's idea of pop music is so narrow."

He added that Pop Idol was no better, and pointed out that even Basildon's pop leviathans Depeche Mode were not considered fit to cut the mustard: "I remember on Pop Idol, Pete Waterman told someone, very sympathetically, 'The thing is, you're more of a Depeche Mode kind of artist.' In other words, 'What are you doing here, pet?'