Thomas Blachman can’t remember what the winning song in ‘X Factor’ was called last year.
When asked directly, he also cannot remember the name of the winner in 2021.
However, after some wild shots, the veteran hits the winner from 2019:
– Was it Alba? Alma? Place On Earth? It’s Kristian from Horsens over there!
– It is not my job to remember the participants’ names! he howls, defending himself by saying that he generally can’t remember names.
A little later it follows, somewhat bitterly:
– Then they have to live up to it so that you can remember them.
Read also: Blachman reveals: This is why my hair fell out
Not so many freaks
We will of course never forget Blachman himself. His megalomania and merciless slaughters are the epitome of ‘X Factor’.
Or at least it has been.
Today starts the roughly 89th season of the Danes’ favorite family programme, but not everything is as it usually is.
‘X Factor’ began in its time as a kind of modern version of the medieval yawning stick in the town square. With Blachman as the executioner of the house altar. It is past:
– There won’t be that many freaks anymore. The ones who don’t give a shit. So the sadists who watched the show to see someone get one over the neck need to watch a violent movie instead, Blachman recommends.
Watch the judge get into trouble when he has to remember ‘X Factor’ winners. Video: Rasmus Flindt Pedersen
Dressed in checked trousers and a cardigan, he bounces around lively on his chair in a claustrophobic office space at a communications agency in Copenhagen.
The Oracle is in a brilliant mood, but if you accuse him of having mellowed over the years, he can seem a bit pug.
Then he recalls the former Blachman, who according to himself ‘ran around frantically with a fistula voice’:
– I have only become more quiet because the youth have become more serious. The teacher has gained more respect for the proletariat! There aren’t that many I can get excited about anymore.
Picture gallery by Rasmus Flindt Pedersen
So it is the youth who have changed. Not Blachman. And he completely denies that neither the spirit of the times, the program’s sudden distancing from bullying, nor the host Sofie Linde have caused TV 2 to ask him to tone down the rhetoric:
– Are you insane?! I have never been reprimanded of any kind. I have to say absolutely whatever the hell I want!
I would advise against that
Blachman even claims that he could ‘of course’ give a completely honest verdict if one of his children auditioned.
But they don’t:
– No, that will never happen! he laughs hysterically.
If they did, it would not be with the father’s blessing:
– I would advise against that at all times! I would never expose my children to TV!
The eccentric turns 60 this spring. In the autumn, he became the father of four when he had a daughter and his second child with his fiancee, Swedish Julia Werup, who is 35 years old.
Blachman estimates that he probably won’t have any more children:
– I think we’ll stop here. But I’m not the type to be castrated like people out in Lyngby. It’s too disgusting. And too impractical.
He doesn’t think it’s a problem at all to become a father at such an old age. However, even Blachman cannot change the order of nature:
– It is of course sad that my youngest children will not have me for such a long time, but the same applies to the viewers. They also have to wave goodbye to me at some point. That’s how it works.
Pondering over epitaph
Blachman is from Nørrebro, where his name and profession are chiseled into hundreds of tombstones at Assistens Kirkegård.
The Danes will never forget him as the king of a popular family program, but he will not be remembered as that.
In any case, it should not say ‘Thomas Blachman. ‘X Factor’ judge’ on his gravestone.
– No, that will never happen! Hell no!
He ponders thoroughly what should be written next. And then it comes:
– ‘Thomas Blachman. Forever hip’.
‘X Factor’ can be seen on 1 January at 8pm on TV 2 and now on TV 2 Play.
16 raving quotes from an hour and a half with Thomas Blachman:
– You can’t be friends with everyone. It has been my New Year’s resolution for the past 30 years!
– I am entering a manic period. It can do something. All of a sudden everything is cool! I have manic periods, but am spared the depressive ones.
– Simon Kvamm has caused the lix number to rise! All the other judges have only been able to say ‘good day’ and ‘goodbye’. Finally, there is one with a little language. He is vain, sartorially self-absorbed and charming. He takes it seriously and has thought about why he is there.
– I tell Kwamie Liv that she must speak quickly and loudly if she has a lot to say, because otherwise we won’t get through it. That is clear.
– I play almost continuously with my children. Sometimes my partner asks what the hell I’m doing. Then I sit and play alone with Brio! I can’t stop at all.
– Should I get married?! It is none of your business! What the hell is that shit. We have amazing children, but everything in its time. We take it easy. We are modern people.
– I vacuum ten times a day! Partly because I can’t hear what other people are saying. I change 30 diapers a day! But not on myself.
– After all, most people are as happy for me as you can possibly be. After all, that’s what I live by. Since I’m not even aware of what the hell I’m saying, you have to see it as a man with a diagnosis like Tourette’s, and then you have to put up with it.
– I am not clairvoyant, but I have an extraordinary feeling with people. Call it extended empathy. Or total lack thereof!
– I almost never lose my judgement. But I did at the Zulu Awards with Tessa. I was post-corona stiff. Usually I have charm and timing. I didn’t have that there.
– If I had stayed in the US to play drums in the 1980s, I would have died of AIDS in the back seat of a tour bus.
– I do a few body exercises a week with Prince Henrik’s old body coach. No, I can’t say more about that. But funny man with hard fate. Think of being loved only when you are no longer there. It doesn’t happen to me. They already love me.
– I have a double herniated disc that erupts every five or ten years. Then I have to lie down for three months. It’s not that cool.
– Alberte Winding was my first partner. Thomas Winding asked me if I knew anything about Lenin, whom I had depicted on my chest. No, I didn’t know a damn thing about that.
– I have a good life. I am greatfull. And I am in many ways a happy person.
– I am even more gorgeous in private!