Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Explaining the error

Yesterday's surprise appearance of an HMV order page for Amelia Lily's X Factor winner's single caused some eyebrows to be raised, and conspiracy theorists to head for the net.

Who can reassure a worried nation? Step forward HMV's explanation expert Gennaro Castaldo:

"Hmv.com was looking to accept customer pre-orders for versions of the X Factor winner's single recorded by each of the three finalists," said HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo.

"Due to a technical issue, only Amelia Lily's details were uploaded.

"These have been temporarily removed so that all three finalists details can go up at the same time.

"This has been the result of an unforeseen but regrettable technical issue, for which we apologise and ask that nothing further be construed."

Well, that seems... hang on a minute: you were inviting people to pre-order records, two of which don't exist and never shall? That actually seems more scandalous than any possible rigging of the X Factor.

X Factor descends further into chaos

Last night, then, it seemed like the Earth itself had grown tired of the X Factor, with "an unusual power spike" forcing the show off the air for fifteen minutes.

ITV might wish it had stayed off the air, as well, with the curious publication of the results of the phone vote on STV's website an hour before they happened.

STV have the sort of convincing explanation that Theresa May might make:

STV said in a statement: "The STV web team prepared stories regarding each contestant in anticipation of the result and due to a technical hitch, all four stories went live on our website.

"We would stress that this was purely a technical hitch and for this we apologise."

Now, we've all done this - accidentally putting live something that you intended for draft - but it's odd that most people only seem to have spied the page hailing the success of Amelia Lily, the actual winner of the vote; and while preparing the pages in advance makes sense, would they have left it so late to compile the pages?

Doubtless all cock-up, but it doesn't look good.

Especially on a day when people are being encouraged to vote formerly evicted contestants back on to the programme. You might recall that when this happened on Big Brother, Channel 4 were censured and forced to pay £50,000 to the then-phone regulator ICSTIS.