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Coldplay's Chris Martin has said he is "grateful" for the The X Factor because of the dearth of other music programmes on television. In an interview with Absolute Radio, the frontman claimed that the show, which he said had "great songs on it every week", was increasingly important because of the lack of other alternatives. With Coldplay set to perform on the final of the programme, which takes place this weekend (December 11), Martin said: "We feel really grateful for it, because they don't often have bands on and we get to play what we want to play, and play songs that we wrote, and no-one's asking us to change anything. It's amazing.