THE REAL sign that the summer is over is the return of The X Factortomorrow night. For the next four months, weekends will be occupied by screeching auditionees, tearful contestants, stern judges, manufactured drama and all the prescribed emotion that one of the most successful television programmes of all time can muster.

The judging panel is more or less unrecognisable from previous series. Instead of Cheryl Cole, Dannii Minogue and Simon Cowell (who has moved to the US outpost of the franchise), we now have Kelly Rowland (formerly of Destiny’s Child), Tulisa Contostavlos (from the group N-Dubz) and Gary Barlow (from Take That), alongside surviving judge Louis Walsh.

Viewers should prepare for extended bouts of TV karaoke, as the live finals are said to be more than three hours long every weekend. Record labels pay close attention to The X Factor, because, as on Glee, songs performed on the show can shoot back into the charts. There’s no definitive formula for a good X Factorsong. Raw emotion with a pared-down performance is always good. Cher Lloyd (currently at number one with Swagger Jagger) nailed it last year with Shakespeare’s Sister’s Stay,while Aiden Grimshaw rode through several live shows based on one rather bleak performance of Tears For Fears’ Mad World.

Contemporary chart music always gets a run-out, so we can expect some of our favourite recent tunes to be sung to death. The obvious targets are from the most impactful album of the year, Adele’s 21. During auditions in June and July, it was reported that the judging panel was considering banning Adele songs from the try-outs, such was the proliferation of hopefuls repeating hits from her album. No doubt we can expect several pained performances of Someone Like Youin a darkened studio with a single spotlight emphasising the bare authenticity of the song.

The recent death of Amy Winehouse and the subsequent re-entry of her two albums into the charts will be enough to warrant the resurrection of some of her hits, if not an entire programme dedicated to the singer. Born This Wayby Lady Gaga is probably the only track from her latest album that contestants will be brave enough to tackle. It will be hard for the series not to feature someone singing Aloe Blacc’s I Need A Dollar, or Christina Perri’s J ar Of Hearts, perfect for those dramatised live studio moments.

It will be interesting to see how the three new judges will fit in to the formula. Rowland and Barlow are the most experienced recording artists, so they will probably be best equipped to analyse the performances, with Barlow set to be the stern one, and Rowland to inject some benign critical Americanisms. Contostavlos is likely to be the wildcard, very much of a new generation of pop stars (she’s just 23). And Louis Walsh will say things such as: “you made that song your own” (translation: you sound nothing like Adele); “tonight, you’re a true pop star” (tomorrow, it’s back to the chip shop); “it’s just not for me” (that was rubbish); “that’s the best performance of the night” (everyone else was rubbish); and “you’ve made [insert city name] proud” (you’re awful, but at least you’ve a home to go to).

The X Factormanages to hook us on benign, obvious, and repetitive phrasing. It has taught us to whoop when a song reaches its peak, to boo the judges pantomime-like when they lay out the most innocuous of criticisms, to cry when we hear the sob-backstories of contestants (“I’m doing this for my mum/dead dog/wide-eyed children”), and to cheer wildly when someone does a vaguely good job of singing Don’t Stop Believing. Will we be cheering in a month’s time when realise The X Factorhas come to completely dominate our weekends? Maybe. Either way, we’ll probably never want to hear Someone Like Youever again.

Or you could...

There are lots of things you could do instead of spending three hours watching the X Factor finals:

- Fly to Rome, Lisbon, Warsaw or Stockholm from Dublin.

- Play two soccer matches, back to back.

- Watch The Tree of Lifeand spend 42 minutes afterwards thinking about what it’s all about.

- Roast a large turkey.

- Count to 10,800.

- Listen to Someone Like You40 times