I'm tired, so very tired, so avoiding the temptation of another Christmas do on Saturday night I decided to stay in and watch television, Merlin followed by the X Factor final.

Problem was they were both scheduled at exactly the same time.

"What say we record the X Factor thingy and watch Merlin?"

I was outvoted by three to one.

"You can watch Merlin anytime, it'll be on I-Player later anyway so you won't even have to record it," said my daughter. Nods of agreement from wife and son.

What happened to the days when the man of the house was the king in his castle?

So in stoney faced silence I endured a long night of Louis Walsh describing JLS for the three hundredth time as: "A bunch of lovely boys who are going to be big stars one day and are going to win tonight."

They didn't of course.

"Big star" were also the words used to describe Eoghan Quigg by Simon Cowell.

He didn't win either maybe because this week there were no tears.

The previous week he had cried buckets over the eviction of his "close friend" Diana Vickers whose singing voice seemed to have a nervous tic.

Cheryl Cole seemed to be permanently in tears every time her "little angel" Alexandra took to the stage and when she went on to win wearing that strange Bacofoil parachute it turned into a massive blubbfest.

The only one who managed to remain dry-eyed was fellow judge Danni Minogue, the artistes she'd mentored all being evicted in previous rounds.

Although Alexandra Burke won it and gets an advance of £150,000 and a modest percentage of earnings from future record sales and tours, the winner in the end was Simon Cowell whose three-year deal with ITV is worth £20m and Saturday night alone was a huge payday for him and ITV, which will have made well over £3million from the eight million phone votes cast.

And so back to Merlin, the last in the present series, which I had to watch twice as the first time I fell asleep five minutes in.

He saved the future King Arthur from death after agreeing with Nimue, a powerful sorceress, that in turn for her saving Arthur somebody would have to die.

It turned out to be his mother who turned up in Camelot covered in what looked like Sugar Puffs. In a fit of pique he went off and blew Nimueh up, as you do.

And so ends that and this series. Have a very Happy Christmas, I hope to catch up with you again in January.