So I'm chatting to Michael Parkinson the other day (as you do), and he mentioned how lucky he felt to have been in his interviewing prime during the last era of truly great stars.

While I think Parky is correct up to a point, the X Factor final on Saturday proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that this generation has at least one star the equal of anyone who went before.

And I'm not talking about Eoghan.

I mean, seriously, just how good was Beyoncé? The woman not only looked and sounded immaculate, the humility and generosity of spirit which shone out of her put her in a different league altogether.

Was there any way Alexandra wasn't going to win after that duet? No disrespect to the lads from Boyzone and Westlife but Queen B has more star quality in her little finger than all of them put together.

I believe it's called the x factor.

Elsewhere in my conversation with Parky we got talking about the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand thing. I realise this is old news now but I think I've got a new angle, so bear with me.

Reading Parky's autobiography on the train to Windsor, I came across an amusing anecdote about when he first visited Australia in the early 1970s with Billy Connolly.

According to Parky, Australia was a much more conservative place in those days and the very sight of the Big Yin holding forth in canary yellow wellington boots and a pair of tights, all long hair and straggly beard, was enough to invite the attentions of the police on more than one occasion. 

As I was reading this, it suddenly occurred to me that Russell Brand has a similar effect on older people these days. I've written about this before but I've never known a personality divide people on generational lines like Brand. He's like kryptonite to the over-40s.

Parky wasn't particularly taken with my theory (which I wasn't surprised about) but I think he actually proved my point by repeatedly referring to the controversy as 'the Brand affair'.

I've noticed a tendency among older commentators to play down Jonathan Ross's part in the offending broadcast when anyone who ACTUALLY HEARD THE THING knows full well he was the ringleader and troublemaker-in-chief.

Why do they do it? Well, Ross has been around that bit longer for a start. He's pretty much establishment. And, a penchant for 'wacky' suits and smutty innuendo aside, he's actually a fairly conservative character at heart.

Russell Brand represents something altogether more threatening to certain sorts of people, much as Billy Connolly did back in the 1970s. Parky and others just can't see it through the rose-tinted spectacles of their nostalgia.