The 'Kids' Edition Of 'The Voice' Lands; Is Foetus Karaoke Next?

I thought it was safe to look. The X Factor and Australia's Got Talent have been buried for the year, hopefully in a coffin woven from a variety of terminal illnesses, meaning we have a brief period to watch television without fear of channel hopping and accidentally catching a glimpse of civilisation crumble one audition at a time. Enjoy it while it lasts, because The Voice Kids is coming in 2014.

The good news is you still have a few months to emit as many carbon emissions as you can in the hope that Australia disappears beneath the sea before Foetus Karaoke somehow finds your country (I imagine reality tv shows are a sort of sentient virus that target their hosts; how else do you explain their spread?). The bad news is, global warming can't promise us such a quick death, so your only chances for escape are camouflage or suicide.

If you opt to live in next year's child-talent dystopia, what horrors you'll witness: not content with another barrage of talent shows, the networks are now going to start playing with the contestants' size? Tired with vapid wankers from last years' talent shows? Say hello to the iWanker Nano. Of course no one will call them that; we'll be too busy ignoring the awful noise being made by these puny whelps in favour of using words like "cute" and "so talented for their age", which is another way of saying "Not as good as an adult... why in god's name aren't we watching adults?" 

Just what vocal talent is discoverable between the ages of 8 and 14 anyway? They'll all be the same. You can't be Lemmy from Motorhead at 11 years old, you'll just be a cute 11-year-old. Unless you're on the cigarettes and whisky from birth, or heartbroken and poor with nothing but an umbilical guitar to express yourself with, these kids are all just going to be Bieber-alikes: an endless photogenic tide of tumours that have somehow grown perfect teeth and hair. They'll also have nothing to sing about: no traumas or tragedies that will have forced them to turn to music as a form of expression. You might as well ask some sperm to write a novel.

Even if these infuriating Hobbits have talent, is it right for TV studios to be profiting from them? Child stars have a track record of growing into adults who are less stable than a tofu bouncy castle. It's not surprising: bypassing childhood and being introduced to an adult world at the age of 8, by the time they reach 25 they're already hitting old-aged senility. Miley Cyrus is now well into her mental nineties, waving her tongue about in public and stripping off like a crazed grandma who's escaped a retirement home. She'll be forgetting her keys and shitting everywhere next.

Our only hope is that the series is a massive failure, otherwise other shows will soon follow. We'll watch kids learning manipulation and scheming on Big Brother Kids, and brainless bimbo toddlers fighting over a bizarrely muscular dimwit child on The Bachelor Kids. Survivor Kids might be worth producing, if simply to punish bad parents for exposing their children to such televisual poison: imagine how good it would feel to see an island of children descend into violence as they're gradually consumed by sunstroke and flies. 

Ok, perhaps that's not a great idea, but it would teach the parents a lesson, and at least it would give the children an experience worth singing about.

You can cyber-stalk stand-up comic, and star of ABC2's The Roast, Jazz Twemlow on Twitter: @jazztwemlow