Dear X Factor, you’ve ruined the best bit of the show - please bring back the old Judges’ Houses

Oh and while we’re preoccupied with bringing things back, I’ll take Josh and Monica as immediate wildcards too please

Seriously, can we go on this holiday? (Picture credit: ITV)

It only takes a YouTube of Sinitta fashioning foliage into evening wear or Rylan sobbing more than most people cry at funerals to remind you how major Judges’ Houses weekend is in the annual X Factor calendar.

It’s like reality TV mixed with travel porn - and who doesn’t love it when an excited singer has clearly been told by a production team to leap into a pool even though they’re currently wearing a dry clean only dress they spent a couple of hundred quid on?

And that, right there, is the first reason why changing the format of Judges’ Houses to contain a live element was a huge error. Not one singer leaped fully clothed into water when they were told they were through; the live show equivalent was a small but enthusiastic hug for Olly Murs and a thumbs up to their nan in the audience.

Live Show Judges’ Houses verdicts felt like a gimmick drafted in by someone who’d been in an emergency meeting about the Strictly rating for four hours without biscuits and was getting desperate. If in doubt, X Factor’s policy is usually ‘drag it on a bit longer and add a stadium’. I bet the relatives that don’t live near London are kicking right off about that train journey.

Fairly sure Che is singing a song entitled ‘This Judges’ Houses format is rubbish, please bring back the old one’ (Picture credit: ITV)

It was all so exciting! Then we came back to the studio and it wasn’t (Picture credit: ITV)

See, Bupsi’s definitely on our side too (Picture credit: ITV)

Adding the stadium took away a lot of the things that make Judges’ Houses great. Getting contestants to watch it back in retrospect got rid of the pace that this weekend normally has and it took away the fun. Judges’ Houses was the best bit of X Factor and if anything in a show being beamed to seven million people can be intimate, that weekend was it.

When they all hung out in their holiday clothes next to a pool - judges included, I don’t want to alarm anyone but Gary Barlow did attend Judges’ Houses in chinos - it felt casual, a teeny bit less scripted and a refreshing change to the baying crowds and formal presenting.

“You’re all so gracious,” they were told, and it was true. Gracious but… but… this is Saturday night on a reality show! I want storming off, a refusal to speak to camera without some swearing, sobbing on the sleeve of an uncomfortable pop star, a bit of sand kicked on the beach. All the things you get when you do it on location, in the moment and not in the glitzy, measured air of a live night verdict.

Speaking of a live night verdict, it is worth saying too that post stadium auditions and 18 weeks (it’s definitely around that figure, right?) of Six Chair challenges, we have been watching this format for a long time already. The last thing X Factor needs at this stage is viewer fatigue, but that feels like what they’ve got. Just - awkwardly - in time for Live Shows. Where basically, the format is exactly the same…