The X Factor: Matthew Raymond-Barker

With the dust settling on Little Mix becoming the first group to win the X Factor in the UK, I thought it worth a mention of the programme in France.

The UK programme is a major cultural event, with serious newspaper debate and TV news coverage, and arguably the biggest television 'event' of the year. The fact that it establishes (for better or worse) the careers of a generation of pop stars is almost secondary.

Meanwhile, there is a French version of the show. There have been two series so far, the first on W9 in 2009, the most recent on more widely know channel M6 running up to June 2011. It replaced Novelle Star, the French variant of Pop Idol on M6, and while the first series was a much smaller scale show than in the UK, the second series aimed to emulate some of the success of the UK programme.

Similar to the UK programme, there were public auditions in theatres around the country, a bootcamp in Paris and work at the judge's houses in London, Marrakesh, Canada and France.

There were four categories of artist,under 25 male, under 25 female, groups and over 25s.

The judges for the second series were Nouvelle star winner singer/songwriter Christophe Willam, veteran musician and composer Olivier Schultheir, singer Véronic DiCaire and musician and manager Henry Padovani.

Sandrine Corman played the Dermon O'Leary presenter role.

Interestingly the winner was Matthew Raymond-Barker, an English student, who took the cash prize and recording deal with Sony. There were only just over 1,000 votes between him and the runner up. The Londoner had appeared briefly in the UK programme the year before, getting rejected at the bootcamp stage.

He auditioned for the french programme while he was living in France to improve his French language at the University of Toulouse for his course at the University of Bath.

In the rounds his song choice was fairly safe, with songs by Robbie Williams, Jessie J, U2 and Michael Jackson featuring. There were a few French numbers including Ma Philosophie and Ne Retiens Pas Tes Larmes by Amel bent, Ca Fait Mal by Christophe Maé amd A la Favour de l'automne by Tété

The final was watched by 2.4 million viewers, a 10.8% audience share, the number of viewers peaking with the early audition programmes which reached up to 3.3million with an audience share of just over 13%.

In comparison, the UK version had 13.1 million viewers, with a peak of 15.5 million. Although down slightly on the previous year's 17.2 million viewers for the final, the series had an average of 11 million viewer throughout the series.

Matthew Raymond-Barker released his winner's song, a cover of Daniel Balavoine's Vivre ou Survivre.

In the UK, every winner's sing has reached number one, most over the Christmas week. Joe McElderry made the top spot the following week despite Rage Against The Machine getting to number one over the Christmas week.

Raymond-Barker's release reached number 94 in the French charts.

Matthew Raymond Barker - Vivre ou Survivre (Winner Single) @ X Factor France 2011 from Rich Lorenzo on Vimeo.