I could never understand my ex-flatmate’s obsession with The X Factor. Excitable status updates. Elaborate buffets. X Factor themed parties. How could a girl with impeccable musical taste revel in such trash?

Then I heard about The Rules.

If the rumours were true, this highly secretive document had the power to turn The X Factor into 120 minutes of world class entertainment.

What sort of fearsome powers could a sheet of paper possibly hold?

Forget the Magna Carta and the Dead Sea Scrolls: if The Rules were as good as I’d heard, they were the ultimate sacred document, capable of creating something beautiful out of something terrible.

Special rules apply

After much pleading and pestering, I was finally permitted a glimpse of the hallowed document last week. Its contents did not disappoint.

The secret to turning The X Factor into watchable television, it turns out, is alcohol. A fuck-ton of it.

You supply the booze. The Rules supply due cause for demolishing it. Watch The X Factor and pass out in a pool of puke. Repeat every Saturday; Sundays too if you’re hardcore.

Some secrets are best left unshared

Like the Turin Shroud, the master copy of The Rules is protected against the ravages of time and beer by an impermeable layer. As their keeper explained to me, “I had to bribe the girl who works in documents to laminate it for me and she doesn’t even work in that department any more.”

What sort of a person would go to the trouble of laminating their X Factor drinking game? Someone who treats The Rules with the RESPECT they deserve, that’s who.

Today Ed Uncovered is proud to publish The Greatest X Factor Drinking Game in the World. This isn’t just a set of rules – this is The Rules, one drinking game to rule them all.

Thanks to Rebecca and Beth for sharing their magnum opus with us undeserving peasants. Drink as irresponsibly as you like but, for the love of god, don’t break The Rules.

It might be the last thing you ever do.

 X-Factor Drinking Rules 2013 Edition

Drink For:

★ Use of ridiculous numbers (e.g I’ll give it 110/a million percent)

★ Friends and family wearing home-made t-shirts

★ Any tears

★  Mention of a dead family member

★ Any winking

★ Louis pulls a ridiculous face

★ Nicole uses a made up word (e.g Shamazeballs)

★ Sharon mentions any of her famous family

★ Reference to it being the X Factor’s tenth year

★ ‘Star Quality’

★ ‘One Trick Pony’

★ Comparing themselves to a megastar (e.g “I’d like to be as successful as Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey”)

★ Key change

★ Choir in the background

★ Hearing background music or a cover of any song by

• Any previous contestant
• Anyone who has ever performed on the show
• Any judge past or present
• Any guest judge past or present

★ Reference to it being a judge’s last ever year

★ ‘xxxx would be proud’ i.e. when someone does a Tom Jones cover, ‘Tom Jones would be proud of that’

★ Contestant comes onstage who has auditioned before

★ Contestant says they have wanted to be a singer since they were born

★ ‘Likeability’

★ ‘You remind me of a young…. xxxxx’

★ ‘You have a great recording voice’

★ ‘Everyone in xxxx (their hometown/country) should vote for you’

★ Dermot hugs someone

★ Anyone on the show or in the room gets goosebumps

★ Anyone uses the term NAILED IT

★ Reference to it being a ‘bad song choice’

★ A judge says ‘you look like a popstar’

★ Calling Sharon ‘Mrs O’

★ Reference to the contestant ‘making the song their own’

★ Gary says ‘Ab-so-lutely’ really slowly’

★ Sighting of the vocal coach or choreographer

★ Nicole says ‘Good job’

★ ‘Ready-made artist/popstar’

★ Overly emotional black families

★ Mention or allusion to Simon Cowell

★ ‘You gave it your all’

★ ‘What I like about you is..’

Download your very own set of The Rules here. But whatever you do, don’t forget to laminate them.

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