Britain's Got Talent - It's Magic!

Last night, however, you could have been forgiven for going all moist-eyed - thanks to Britain's Got Talent (ITV 1, 8pm).

Take little Connie, a six-year-old girl whose voice was, in the words of Mr Nasty Simon Cowell, 'pitch perfect.'

Tear factory judge Amanda Holden was weeping, ex-newspaper editor Piers Morgan was stunned and even Cowell was silenced.

After a day in which you suspected Cowell and Co had seen dozens of 'mummy's little stars' who were anything but, when Cowell started by saying: "Connie, I'm going to speak to you as though you were an adult," I think most of us feared the worst. It was, of course, all an act - Cowell adored her. He got a kiss from Holden for being so sweet - good to see he's got her sussed then!

What is coming through in this talent hunt is that there are a lot of talented people out there - dancers appear to be particularly strong in this respect.

However, there's a lot of crap out there too - not least because if there wasn't, we probably wouldn't be watching.

And nowhere is that more obvious than the area known as magic. I hate magicians - as in the ones who do daft card tricks or make rabbits disappear.

It seems I'm not alone - the judges hate them too. Ridiculed, in the main, for being just bloody awful, the magicians came and went, hardly able to believe that they don't warrant a place at the Royal Variety Show, which is the prize for the winning act.

Truth is, all the magicians deserve a place at the Royal Variety Show, because the Royal Variety Show seems to set out to be a celebration of all that is crap and twee. The stars on Britain's Got Talent, however, deserve a much wider audience.

And I don't mean Ant and Dec.