Angol has talent

It's the men of Poland I feel most sorry for. If your household is anything like mine, wrestling the remote control from the ladies between the hours of eight and ten each Saturday night is a lot like stealing fire from the gods—worth trying, but almost certain to end in disaster. The worst thing is that, once you start watching the programme, you can't help getting involved. The pounding song fragments that accompany every mention of somebody's mother, every moment of triumph and every moment of failure are carefully selected for maximum emotional impact. There will be tears, and some of them will be yours.

Mam Talent is only in its third season, but it feels like I've spent several decades of my life watching it. At least this has given me plenty of time to think. What I think about most is the definition of 'talent.' There are a huge number of human talents, but I’ve only seen a tiny fraction of them on Mam Talent. Some people, for example, are talented administrators, but I can't see 30 seconds of flawless double-entry bookkeeping getting through to the final. I have talents for wearing inappropriate footwear, enraging Polish people by misunderstanding their culture and mixing awesome gin and tonics. Would I get "trzy razy tak" for putting milk in my lemon tea? The only talents I see on Mam Talent are: the talent to sing like an adult even though you are a cute child, the talent of having oiled muscles and the talent of pretending Praga Południe is South Central L.A. I've been to Compton and one of its defining features is that nobody there fantasises about living in Praga Południe.

The British version of the show specialises in fat ugly people who unexpected sing like slim attractive people. You're probably one of the 94 million people who have watched the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle perform this trick. A moment's thought tell us that there is no reason to believe that only attractive people have good singing voices, but we are so conditioned by the pop industry into associating singing on television with good looks that we are hypnotised when we see the opposite.

The Polish version of the show specialises in small children who unexpectedly sing like famous adults. There was a boy on last week who played the piano and sang Elton John songs in a voice that sounded exactly like Elton John would sound if he had a Polish accent. What is the talent here? Imitating Elton John? In every series of Mam Talent there is inevitably a cute eight-year old girl who sings as if she has been possessed by a large black woman. It's a startling thing to see, but is it talent? Would anybody want to listen to that voice for more than a few seconds if they couldn't see it inexplicably emanating from a small blonde child?

At least I learn something about Polish celebrities by watching Mam Talent, it's an area of expertise in which I am otherwise tragically ill informed. There's a brunette with tattoos called Agnieszka, a blond one called Małgosia, and a guy with glasses called Kuba. The tattooed brunette is a strange mix of motherly kindness and heavy metal imagery, the blonde one has an aura of pure evil and Kuba appears to be a nerdy 15-year-old boy trapped in the body of a 50-year-old man; I assume this is the result of a voodoo curse, like in that 80s movie with Tom Hanks. Presumably these people have talents of their own, although whether they are talented at finding talent in others, which would be useful in this setting, is debatable.

Jamie Stokes