We need something less evil than Britain's Got Talent. How about public executions?

You know what the world needs most right now? What it needs is five good-looking-ish, talented-ish blokes dressed in a mélange of artfully deconstructed dove-grey suits singing one of the songs out of Les Misérables, like a boy band but one that does numbers from musicals rather than original compositions, oh, and preferably with the kind of crap name that you can imagine being brainstormed by one of the teams on The Apprentice…

Well, if that’s what you’ve been thinking these past few weeks, lucky you! You’ll surely have loved the final of Britain’s Got Talent, which gave exactly the result you were pining for: not the slightly rubbish impressionist; not the sickeningly precocious boy rap duo; not the hunky Canadian illusionist; not the posh bird fiddle player; not the girl singing opera; but — yes — Collabro.

Not that I actually watched the programme, you understand. Well, I did, but only half-heartedly on ITVplayer, skipping through it as quickly as I could (which isn’t very: the adverts take an age) just to get a taste of what it is people are talking about when they say that Britain’s Got Talent is on its last legs. Clearly they’re more discerning than I am, because so far as I can see it’s no less rubbish than it ever was. But, hey, what do I know? I’m afraid I’ve long since reached that stage of crusty middle-agedom where basically you hate everything on TV that’s not University Challenge, the latest Game of Thrones/Breaking Bad must-see epic drama or something about the second world war or that rather good Adam Nicolson documentary about whaling on South Georgia.