In the hands of the eventual winner, Louisa Johnson – a nuts-and-bolts X Factor belter if ever there was one – it became an empty pile of bombastic dreck.
It is just that, it is Jordan, and not the demographics of an empty pile of rocks like Utah or some sudden national affection for Stockton-Malone-Sloan et egad al. that is the attraction here.
The signature dish, or, at least, the most popular one, would seem to be the mussels, which come in a black tin bucket with "MOULES" written on the side — there is something gratifying, perhaps primally so, about sucking down bivalves and melted butter and watching the empty shells pile up.
We want to see the empty shells pile up.
The "winter of discontent", in 1978-79, saw a series of massive strikes by everyone from lorry drivers to mortuary workers that left petrol stations empty, rubbish piled up in the streets and, in Liverpool, dead bodies unburied.
The sous-chef, a man with a literary bent, a lifelong love of the Boston Red Sox and a taste for vodka, took pity on me as the empty shells piled up around my ankles -- and my fury grew with the speed of my knife.
When the buses had filled up, soldiers flagged down empty lorries and piled the remaining men in.
"You can watch the sun move across the sky, and the only way you can tell the time is by how many empties are piled up in the corner.
The second is "Kamsa hamnida," or "thank you," the inevitable response to whichever generous soul drops what he's doing and leads you to Hyundai-ok, past stalls of frozen fish and fresh fungi and down narrow passageways stacked with empty boxes and piles of dirty dishes.
Jamal Khan, a junkman, deals in old shoes, empty bottles and piles of tin.
