Talent shows are becoming more highbrow.

For every 'Comic Relief does Fame Academy' (Dawn was robbed), there is an 'Operatunity'... with 'Musicality' slotting in nicely between in a midbrow fashion.

But now literature is the next creative sphere to get the talent contest treatment. Currently being promoted as Pop idol’s intellectual nemesis, 'Lit Idol' is on a mission to discover the best unpublished crime novelist. With the winner receiving representation by the Curtis Brown literary agency.

But the best part of the affair is they've managed to bag a certain Mr Cowell to sit on the judging panel. Alas, it's not the pseudo Machiavellian pop Geppetto Simon, but his sibling Tony.

And what qualifies Tony to be involved you may ask. Well he's worked as a
journalist and literary agent, not to mention writing Simon's biography.

Perhaps I should have entered my own short novella about a purely fictitious freelance lifestyle journalist, turning to a life of felony to survive life's infinite cruelties.

Unfortunately, I'm a little too idle to actually write it.