CLASSIX FACTOR
Older readers may remember the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition being televised on Sunday evenings, inbetween the teatime Dickens adaptation and the obligatory David Attenborough wildlife programme. I certainly do. Every performer (particularly guitarists, clarinettists and pianists) prompted a poke from the nearest available parent, accompanied by a hissed: "See? that's what happens when you PRACTISE!" That was my cue to remember a vital unfinished piece of Physics homework (failed that O-level too).

Young Musician of the Year has been moved to BBC Four, to sit on the Super Spod shelf next to QI. But somebody at BBC2, probably thinking that there aren't enough white middle-class people making utter fools of themselves on TV, came up with the bright idea of an X-factor for classical musicians.

So here's the deal. We get Famous Cellist Matthew Barley who is a kind of Simon Rattle Lite - all curly hair and enthusiastic jeans. Matthew decides to widen the audience for classical music by creating a special school for talented young musicians to compete with each other to be the next classical star. Like..you know...Nigel Kennedy. But not G4, oh no.

Matthew gets his classical expert friends to be the judges and holds auditions around the country, just like on X-factor. However, having a dead dad or acting like a ment doesn't get you far if you can't play an instrument to at least Grade 8 standard. Having said that, we get a few choice specimens who don't make it. Notably a boy with a haystack on his head and a weird embouchure (music speak for not puffing your cheeks out when you play a wind instrument - in this case, a clarinet). Haystacks puffed like a bullfrog in mating season, which is Not Good and leads to a crappy sound. He seemed blissfully unaware of this, and staunchly defended his crap sound, backed up by his formidable mother. Oh yes, there are plenty of formidable parents around in this series. Another generically handsome posh boy flautist declared that he wanted to be a classical equivalent of Robbie Williams. I think Tchaikovsky got there before you, mate.

You can take it as read that all our contestants are a bit...well...intense. And most of them seem to already have places at the Royal College of Music. Which is nice.

After they settle in to the country house music school (it's never a warehouse in Peckham, is it?), Matthew gets them to improvise. Improvising is not something classical musicians do; this alone probably set jazz musos up and down the country a-cackling gleefully They have to come up with a few bars that epitomises their personality. Going by this, the bassoon player thinks she's Ivor the Engine. Most of them muddle through, and try to get away with playing as few notes as possible. More bizarre, performance-related tests follow, and the poor little scraps are mortified in shopping centres, pushed around by tango teachers, and end up doing a make-or-break performance in front of a group of very patient teenagers in Hoxton.

When not being forced into strange producer-led exercises to 'expand their horizons', they practise. They get up in the morning, and do some scales. Then maybe a lesson. Then more practice. Then lunch, where they talk about music and try to ignore Matthew speaking with his mouth full. And in the afternoon, they practise some more before being forced into the garden by the producers to do non-practising-type shots. Yep, that's right. Musicians are a bit boring - well the proper ones anyway. They play the same thing over and over again for seven hours a day. Then they talk about flattened fifths. And then they go to bed. Trust me, I know. I married a musician.

The Big Performance at the end of each week is where they perform a piece or do something for the judges. This week they each had 15 minutes in front of the incredibly patient East End teenagers. Nerdy guitar boy (the house favourite) demonstrated the versatility of the guitar sound rather well, though he should stay away from funk. The Winehouse-esque pianist made emo hearts go all a-flutter with Chopin's Funeral March (OK, it's really called the third movement of Piano Sonata no. 2 in B-flat minor).

The judges accuse the pretty blonde violinist from Suffolk, who works in a bar and runs jam sessions with bejumpered folkies to make ends meet, of using sex to win over the kidz. Ummm...flicking your hair while you play isn't exactly on a par with Beyonce, but this is Classical World, where talent is everything. Unless your name is Myleene.

In the end, the judgest decide to sack Robbie Williams Boy for being a smug, irritating little twerp, and a taciturn teenage trumpet player who crumples into a quivering heap at the very thought of a three word sentence. Not great for swapping anecdotes on a sofa with Sam and Mark...

Next week: Matthew waves his arms about and wears jeans which don't have the creases ironed in. And the youngsters do a bit more practice.

SEVEN AGES OF ROCK PT 2: ART ROCK

Mr P, the guitar geek, has promised to grumble in a separate post about Part one of Seven Ages of rock: apparently they didn't mention that Jimi was practised loads before he was hailed as The God of All Guitarists and...well, I stopped listening...

Anyway, I'm doing Art Rock because I was there. Kind of. My dad went to Floyd gigs and even worked for Nick Mason for a while (Mr Mason is known in our family as That Bastard Mason and loyalty compelled me to shout "Git!" every time he appeared on the screen. He didn't give me a summer job processing his royalty payments either. Git.). We had all the original Velvets' and a few Bowie albums, and my mum officially fancied Bryan Ferry. I also was at the iconic Wall gig at Earl's Court in 1981, so there.

Seven Ages of Rock is also great for playing our favourite TV game, called "'E's Dead". The concept is simple. You need at least two players. The first person to shout "'E's Dead" when a now-dead actor/musician appears on the screen scores a point. If challenged you must name the dead person before you can get your point. Tonight's scores were Sarah: 4, Mr P: 1.

We started with the Floyd in their drippy trippy phase of singing about bicycles and wet posh girls. The rather fine archive footage - seriously, old farts like me only watch these things for the archive footage - was spoiled by arty editing (how can you possibly out-farty the Floyd? Fools!) and updated inserts with clever clever effects. They actually managed to wheel all four surviving members of Pink Floyd, though not in the same room - that would have been fun - and the po-faced narrator managed to slot in a drummer joke ("four musicians and a drummer..."). They all said that yes, they were interested in pushing the boundaries of music, blah blah, and there were shots of them discussing chord changes in a studio, and Syd looking slightly embarrased on a stool while a 1960s BBC chap asked them why they had to play so loudly. More clever effects meant to illustrate the effect of LSD on an archive shot of Syd playing guitar, and a film of one of his lamer pre-breakdown songs that everybody apart from three emo teenagers in Wantage would prefer to forget.

"Meanwhile..." intones the narrator. "Syd's every move was being watched by a young singer from Bromley with funny eyes..." Cue the first bit of archive Bowie footage. According to this lot, Bowie had a novelty hit with Space Oddity, and then was cut adrift in the music scene..hang on, is The Laughing Gnome to be airbrushed from history altogether?

Over in New York, a young and pretty Lou Reed was thrown together with a not as young but very beautiful Nico, a grumpy John Cale and silent, long-suffering Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker. They tie Mo up in the name art. Nico sings flat. Andy Warhol looks a scream. John Cale appears to remember everything, while Lou purses his cat's arse mouth and claims not to recall if they actually play a psychiatrist's convention (cue shot of Edie Sedgewick - damn...missed that one - et al dancing with the Velvets in front of a group of very nervous psychiatrists). A clever bit of editing makes it look as if David Bowie is taking notes or something.

David returns to the UK, apparently, and comes up with Ziggy Stardust - a fictional amalgam of Syd, Jimi, and assorted other doomed heroes. A horribly overrated album follows, and lots of music journalists make lots of money from analysing the true meaning of Ziggy/Dark Side/Roxy Music.

The problem with this pseudo academic approach is that it forgets the most important aspect of these chosen groups. Do they rock, or do they not? Aged seven, I couldn't give a monkeys about pushing the barriers of performance. The big question was: could you dance to it? Did it groove? Floyd grooved (especially post-Syd, when they basically let Richard Wright build a groove, and sat on it for 20 minutes); Bowie grooved; Roxy grooved (before they went all lounge).

Genesis didn't. Peter Gabriel popped up with a neat goatee to explain that he felt impelled to take the Floyd levels of performance into a complete new universe of wankery, resulting in an experience that looked like a failed audition for Playaway. The rest of Genesis had enough self-knowledge to look slightly embarrassed.

We return to the Floyd, who are irritated that selling gazillions of albums not only means more Ferraris to buy, but more people to play to. Apparently The Wall was the concept album gig to end all concept album gigs. I just remember lots of inflatables, a dirty great wall being built, and Dave Gilmour doing the solo for Comfortably Numb on top of it, and not being able to speak for 24 hours afterwards.

Thank heavens for Punk. We recovered by playing our favourite DVD of Spinal Tap...that's a proper rock documentary.