Sometimes it’s best to hide the ‘real you’ away

"Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar," he advises his university-bound son. "Take each man's censure but reserve thy judgment."

Then he really hits the nail on the head: "This above all — to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Now I don't know if Cheryl Cole has pinned this up in the X Factor green room but the contestants seem to have taken it to heart.

Katie Waissel, who has provided so much of the melodrama, is a case in point. Her most sacred aim, repeated weekly, is to be true to herself. She wants to display to the panel, to the whole world, something she calls the "real Katie".

Only, after the judges saved her from elimination on Sunday, the world made its feelings about the "real Katie" known.

A Facebook group entitled "It's Easier to Get Rid of Chlamydia Than It Is Katie Waissel" has now been "liked" by 215,995 people. The Sun found this "revolting", which may have had more moral weight had it not devoted its Monday front page to denouncing the 24-year-old singer.

Poor Katie has even received death threats.

Understandably, she is "disgusted and freaked out". Perhaps she would have been better off not being true to herself at all. After all, it wasn't long ago that contestants on light-entertainment shows declared that tonight, Matthew, they were going to be someone else — and no one threatened to kill them.

But the X Factor philosophy has made a deep impression on Katie. She keeps repeating her second great claim to the title: she wants it more than anyone else. As we know from past seasons, from The Apprentice too, if you want something hard enough, you will get it.

Presumably that's how that other Kate, the waity one, got her Prince.

You only have to take the idea to its extreme to see how vapid it is. For who could deny that Osama bin Laden really wants the infidel to die, that he was just, in fact, being himself with the 9/11 thing? We could alternatively go a bit Freudian here and ask whether Katie's "self" is in fact merely a construct formed by the superego — whose name, in this case, is Simon Cowell.

Maybe I'm sentimental but I tend to think reality TV works best when there is an element of self-realisation, when wanting is channelled into application. But you only have to hear teenagers talk of their aspirations to see how widespread the X Factor philosophy has become.

In an age where even those with three As are unable to find a place at university, I suspect it's not just Katie who has been sold a lie.

Apple's long and winding road to overkill

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on iTunes, in Apple-tastic, fab-tigital, record-company-lawyer-approved-sound: The Beatles!

Trrrring! that's a textual representation of the opening chord of Hard Day's Night And the band play on. Forgive me if I don't go "wooooo".

I suspect most fans won't need to download what they own on CD. Last year's revival made sense — the whole back catalogue had been remastered — but this follows too fast.

It brings a little sadness, in fact. I reached saturation point listening to the Beatles as a teenager. Like a gout-ridden old bishop with port, I must ration my consumption now. A surprise blast — Baby You're a Rich Man in The Social Network — does it for me ... but before the marketing men go crazy, I'd counsel that you can have too much of a good thing.

How we need a killer instinct

Fabio Capello's on the blower. Would I mind awfully playing up front for England against France tonight? Only, what with the injuries to Rooney, Defoe, Bent, Zamora and Agbonlahor, he's running out of able bodies.

The lack of top-quality English strikers is much lamented in the sports pages. Rooney aside (and he's more of a deep-lying attacker), none of the current top four teams has one. One member of the present squad, Jay Bothroyd, plays for Cardiff City, in the Championship.

Since this was never a problem in the Nineties — when Shearer, Sheringham, Wright, Ferdinand, Cole, Fowler and Collymore banged them in for fun — I must ask if this reflects a deeper national malaise. We are left with plenty of creativity, but no delivery. Too much prancing, not enough dancing.

I would be honoured, I told Fabio, but to be honest I see myself as more of a libero.

Jewels of our high streets

Happy birthday londonshopfronts.com, two years old this week. Like the best blogs, it has a concept so simple that you can grasp it at once.

It's a bunch of shopfronts from various corners of London, isolated, photographed and posted by Hackney resident Emily Webber. And not pretty, tasteful ones either — just regular small businesses, the sort we pass each day, unnoticing.

As with the street-style blog, the Sartorialist, you wonder: why did she pick that one out? Was it the way Frank was so happy about getting the apostrophe right on his eponymous café in Southwark that he had an extra one put in, just for fun? Was it the ambitious art deco font that did it for Food & Wine in Shepherd's Bush? The strange dignity of Top Beauty Nest in Homerton?
You'll never look at a high street in the same way again.