A rough guide to what the fuck Kelly Rowland's on about

"Put it down, girl." "You up there saying 'I be me-me, boo-boo'." The words of a woman teetering on the very brink of madness. We delve into the mind of Kelly Rowland and ask: "Sorry, what?"

If I didn't know better, I'd say Kelly Rowland was clinically batshit. I mean, what the bloody hell's she talking about half the time? She prattles on gamely about go-girl this and holla that, but what does it actually mean? Does she even know herself?

Never one to refuse a challenge, I decided to do some investigating and, with the help of Google Translate and a crack team of sociolinguists, I think I've come up with some answers.
The Devlin effect

What became immediately apparent was that Rowland is at her most linguistically crackers when dealing with recently-booted-out half-woman-half-squirrel Janet Devlin. We were all charmed when she started doing the whole I-might-cry-in-a-minute Ellie Goulding thing in the auditions, but it had an altogether more pronounced effect on Kelly. Take this example from this weekend.


You can be fairly sure that in her 16 years of life Janet Devlin has never before been informed that she "kills on stage", given that she palpably has all the stage presence of an hour-old foal trying to straighten its limp legs enough to stand up. Nor has anyone ever called her "mamma" before. It must be frightening for her, surely?
Amelia Lily is not a health and safety inspector

Here we can see Kelly momentarily forgetting the nature of the competition itself.


Her misapprenhension is that Amelia Lily, talented though she undoubtedly is, has the power to shut down the building for violations of health and safety legislation such as the Fire Safety Act. She in fact has no such jurisdiction. When I called the Health and Safety Executive to confirm this, they gave me the following quote.

It should also be pointed out that it is quite a leap of logic to suggest that the viewing audience itself is composed of lilies, just because the singer's surname is 'Lily'. Were this the case, the text voting system would be fatally flawed.
"On the breakdown do more of the beatbox thing like you did at the start"

Poor, befuddled Little Mix.


Leaving aside for a moment the key question of what a 'breakdown' actually is, you've got to feel sorry for the Little Mixers here. They stare stupefied at Rowland as she delivers "constructive criticism" that doesn't make the remotest bit of sense. Even if they knew what she meant they wouldn't be able to act on her advice, given that they are in fact four Sylvanian Families gerbils.
The Hong Kong florist slip

Here a gaffe of epic proportions as Rowland seems to forget her surroundings entirely and profess affection for a Hong Kong florist while delivering her verdict to Marcus Collins.


The florist in question is Mee-Sum Yu, with whom Kelly has been friends on Facebook for some time.

Note her professed fondness for the page 'Keli's Florist 姬莉花店', which is a joint venture with Rowland in Kowloon Bay.

Summary of key findings

As a sociolinguistic study, Rowland proves fascinating. In conclusion, she is clearly and unequivocally mad as a lorry and needs to be locked up in some kind of mental unit. Having submitted the results of my study to the Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, I was eventually sent the following reply.

And those guys know what they're talking about, too.