Hassaan

You'd think the actions to prevent striking would be pretty obvious...

I'm seeing them tonight! It's only the second concert I've ever been to and the other one was also a boyband. :D EDIT: I enjoyed it! I don't blame them for not singing much from 2.0 as there wasn't much in the way of highlights for me. The audience loved Eternal Love though.

Good call. It's good to see them expanding.

I don't really get the Fairytale of New York comparisons. Yes there's an Irish sound and it's a male/female duet but that was also built around it being an argument between the two 'protagonists'. Indeed, a closer example is Gary Barlow & Sheridan Smith's How Christmas is Supposed to Be. Back to this, I like it. I hope it does well.

They hinted at it when they announced the tour back in February but I suspect you are right. I'm going to the show on Friday (Birmingham) so I did wonder if there was going to be a surprise there.

New album?

I like the sound of it based on that snippet.

Very interesting stuff. Harry's first song was pretty poor whereas I thought Louis wasn't that bad overall; clearly he needed a lot of improvement but that snippet we'd seen for 11 years made it look much worse than it was.

I wish they'd call an election already.

It was intense but I'm glad I got the experience. This was spring 2021 so COVID restrictions were still in full swing, plus I'm autistic and didn't really know what my needs were.

I worked on it for a while in 2021. It's a shame to see it go, especially as it was a financial reason.

That's a bit weird then. I can't think why in that case unless it's more convenient somehow.

Maybe it's a vocally (and physically) demanding show for them and they don't want to run the risk of catching anything? I could understand it if so.

Finally booked my tickets for the Birmingham concert (Friday).

It feels like Labour are positioning themselves as a nicer version of the Tories purely to win votes, and they may roll back on a lot of the stuff if they get elected. Not sure they're necessarily acting as the opposition in that case but I'm not as clued up on this sort of thing.

I'm really looking forward to this. I've played all the Mario home console games (64, Sunshine, Galaxy 1 & 2, 3D World (+ Bowser's Fury), U (Deluxe) and Odyssey) so I'm interested to see how it builds on that.

I've updated the original post with some extra X Factor numbers. If anyone's able to get hold of up to date numbers for everything it'd be really appreciated. :)

4.3 million. The 2022 opener was 4.4 million. It's worth mentioning that its trajectory was a bit weird (hovered in the 4 million mark for the most run instead of growing) so perhaps unsurprising that it returned slightly lower, but the response seems to be better this year.

Why does it have to be an autistic teenager too? I'm autistic and I'm not sure if she's basically mocking us for being easily led (which may be true but still).

It didn't make the top 100 but it was no. 4 on sales.

They performed 'The Ordinary Road' (the Chinese song they originally performed as part of a WeChat concert) at some of the China concerts. I imagine they've got no immediate plans to release anything new but a Christmas song or something would be nice. Just for old times sake (re the Xmas No. 1).

It's scary that this seems to be happening all the more often now, but I don't know how much of that is the media coverage.

They'll be the first to cry 'misandry' or something if it was the other way round.

I've been to one concert - Westlife at Wembley Stadium last year. I intend to see JLS & Take That in Birmingham in October and May respectively.

I hope it's sooner.