Britain's Got Talent, ITV1: And the show's real winner is ... Simon Cowell

One of the Prime Minister's main complaints about the media in his "feral beast" speech was that it "saps the country's confidence and self-belief". Presumably he loves Britain's Got Talent, with its affirmative, confidence-building title, and its set of inspiring narratives about people seizing the day and lifting themselves out of the ordinary.

The variety talent contest - in effect, Opportunity Knocks rejigged for the post-Pop Idol generation - has been running every night this week, earning very healthy ratings. Last night the public got the chance to vote on the six finalists. The bookies' favourite was, apparently, six-year-old Connie Talbot, small enough to make the hosts, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, look tall, and yet with the mature vocal style of a nine-year-old. Her surprisingly firm, tuneful performance of "Over the Rainbow" reduced one of the panel of judges, Amanda Holden, to tears. She faced hot competition, however, from Bessie Cursons, 11, whose precocious faux-cockney rendition of "I'm Getting Married in the Morning" carried eerie suggestions of Jack Wild - the Artful Dodger in Oliver! - and Bonnie Langford (if she won, she told the judges, it would be "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"); and from Paul Potts, a Secombesque tenor with an appealingly underdog air.

Making up the numbers were the Kombat Breakers, breakdancers from Coventry; Damon Scott and his Michael Jackson-imitating monkey puppet Bubbles; and the Barwizards, who juggle bottles and cocktail shakers in an ingenious extended tribute to Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Of course, the probability that they would lose was glossed over: an interesting aspect of the programme is the way that every contestant is cajoled into telling the cameras that they are determined to win - the prize, incidentally, is £100,000, and the chance to perform in front of the queen at the Royal Variety Performance: Her lucky Majesty. Meanwhile the judges - along with Holden, Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell - implied to each contestant that they were the most likely winner: "You're the dark horse", "I think I've seen the winner", and so forth.

In the event, Paul Potts won the phone-in vote.

The only real winner, though, is Cowell, because he owns the format, which has now been sold in territories from America to China, from Sweden to Australia.

But I couldn't shake a sense that these are talents marooned in a century that has lost interest in such things. The programme left me feeling like the dinner-party guest having to sit through the host's children's party pieces, expressing wonderment at appropriates gaps in the performance. Bring on the grown-up conversation. Bring on the food. Above all, bring on the drink. And this time, don't juggle with it: pour the bloody stuff.