So it’s official: this year’s season of The X Factor will be presented by Olly Murs and Caroline Flack. This isn’t really a surprise – the pair have been favourites for the job ever since Dermot O’Leary’s sudden exit last month – but is it a good decision? I’d argue that it’s half of one.

While O’Leary was never anything less than a consummate ringleader, somehow managing to find the sweet spot between championing the show and mocking it from afar, he probably was getting a little long in the tooth for the job. The X Factor is – in its bones – a children’s show about pop music, but in the past few years it had been growing decidedly middle-aged. A Radio 2 DJ hosted it. Weeks were themed around music from 40 years ago. Between them, Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell have a combined age of over 350. If it wants to stay relevant, The X Factor needs to constantly self-immolate and start again.

And Caroline Flack is a brilliant choice as O’Leary’s successor. She’s sharp, she’s funny, and there’s a clear sense that her career is on the ascent. She’s made mistakes, like copping off with teenage contestants, but since winning Strictly Come Dancing last year she’s managed to put them all behind her. She’ll be great.

But then there’s Olly Murs.

Olly Murs, in a hat. Olly Murs, grabbing his genitals and pulling a funny face. Olly Murs, yet to take part in a televised conversation where he hasn’t gone “Nah, seriously though” immediately before entering into an unnecessarily comprehensive monologue about the promotional strategy for his next three albums. Olly Murs, performing with the Muppets. Olly Murs, hearing the term “self-awareness”, but never really knowing exactly what it means.

If anything is going to trip up this year’s X Factor, it’s going to be Olly Murs. He’ll be fine – maybe even great – during the first half of the series, where the sum total of his involvement will be pulling a sympathetic face and hugging everyone all the time. But come the live shows, with autocues to read and marks to hit and time constraints to consider and spinning plates all over the place, he’s a liability in the making.

The sensible thing would be to mimic The Voice’s set-up, where the more accomplished presenter (Caroline Flack on The X Factor, Emma Willis on The Voice) does the bulk of the donkey work, while the less experienced half of the team (Murs on The X Factor, Bobby Voidface from JLS on The Voice) sits backstage reading out tweets and being nice to mums.

But we’ll see what happens. I have a feeling that this isn’t worth losing any sleep over, because the curse of the talent show artist will kick in and level things out after a year or two. Whenever a contemporary recording artist takes part in a show like this – when Jessie J and Kylie were on The Voice, for instance, or when Gary Barlow was on The X Factor – there will come a time when they start fretting about the direction of their careers and leave.

It’s a near-certainty that Olly Murs will do this too, quitting The X Factor relatively quickly in order to release another middling album about his hats or genitals. And then Caroline Flack can present it all by herself, like she should have done anyway. There, problem solved.