Does Britain Have the X-Factor?

Ant and Dec made a very poignant point at the end of last nights super-sparkly finale. "Thanks to all our contestants, to everyone who came to the auditions. Without you, there would be no show."

I dream of the day that the doors open at the auditions and no-one remembers to turn up. Ant and Dec sit awkwardly on stools, the judges play music from happier times, the camera man films a pigeon eating an old kebab in the carpark. Eventually the boredom gets too much and everyone will slump out of the building. Last out would be the caretaker, who will turn the light off and say "well that's that then" before closing the door to the party forever.

Britain has got so much talent. It's just that people are looking in the wrong place. Sure the next molded popstar to come through the show successfully is a reasonably good singer and I'm sure he and his family are very happy for him. But, within a year, I predict he will be sitting in a pub outside Aberdeen having joined the "I-was-famous-once" club. Popstars, Big Brother 'icons', dancing groups and talking dogs are not talent, they are fads. To find real talent you must look for someone who has made a real difference, someone who spent their entire career building up knowledge and who is deeply respected even after their death. Talent shows distract us from the real genius of Britain.

Before writing this blog I spent literally one minute thinking of who I could compare the latest Talent show winner to. There was a great big, blue plaque on the wall of the building where I studied chemistry. "Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (1921–1996) worked here". Who is he? And why does he have more talent than a winner of a talent show?

Born in Yorkshire in 1921, Geoffrey Wilkinson is a name you have probably never heard of. In 1951, he and a colleague working at Harvard discovered the structure of an iron compound, which contained 'organic' (made up of carbon and hydrogen) chemicals. "So what?" I hear you ask. Well, the discovery of this molecule led to the invention of catalytic converters, like the one in your car. The discovery also led to a Nobel Prize (for scientists, this is like winning the X-Factor) for Prof. Wilkinson. So there's one thing that makes him awesome. All of our cars are different thanks to him, how many of us will be living differently in 50 years time because of talent contest winners?

You know those margarines that are so easy to spread? Well if Wilkinson hadn't played his part in coming up with a catalyst that hydrogenates (literally, 'adds hydrogen to') vegetable oils; margarine would be much harder to make. And a world without margarine is almost not worth living in. Not only margarine, but pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals require hydrogenation in key areas. Targeting these specific areas is important, and by making a few structural changes to Wilkinson's catalyst, molecules with specific shape can be made. This is seriously cool stuff, it means that scientists in labs can start engineering molecules into exact shapes. These exact shapes can act as a 'key' fitting into the specific 'lock' of enzymes in your body. So really without someone of this talent, we may not have some of the drugs we have, we may not have some of the agrochemicals we have and we may not have margarine. How has Britain changed due to the 'talent' shouted at us on Saturday evenings?

Obviously Prof. Wilkinson was not a lone visionary, this isn't the way science works. But genius like this isn't celebrated. There are scientists up and down the country working together to change the way we live. So Britain probably does have talent, but I don't think it can be decided by three popstars and a Baywatch 'hunk'.