So bad it's almost good - or why do we put ourselves through it year after year? (Eurovision Song Contest)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Eurovision Song Contest
Date:	14/05/07 (407 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Terry Wogan - say no more

Disadvantages: Nobody likes us, everybody hates us, think we'll go and eat worms

I’ve seen some strange behaviour around the world – Sadhus in India who will sit with one arm in the air for 20 years to show how holy they are; Spaniards who’ll dress up in what looks (to our outside eyes) like Ku Klux Klan uniforms and beat themselves ritually during Holy Week. But if you want a painful and ritual humiliation, there’s little to beat the annual Eurovision Song Contest for a bit of mental and aural self-flagellation.

Since I was old enough to hum along to Waterloo and jig around my grandparents’ living-room, the Eurovision Song Contest has been a must-see event. Admittedly back in the early days we watched out of excitement that we might win and even if we didn’t we’d always do pretty well but these days it’s a torturous evening of being forced to realise that nobody else much likes us. The eastern bloc might have been seen to have ‘lost’ the Cold War (although that in itself is debatable) but sure as hell they are winning the Eurovision peace. All the old European countries that were forced into the qualification rounds got kicked out – poor old Malta! Over in Valetta Eurovision is the biggest event of the year - although they invariably put up the same overweight warbling lady. Imagine being pushed out by countries that didn’t even exist 10 years ago.

And is it a song contest at all any more? Surely it’s now the equivalent of a Euro vote for Head Boy or Head Girl – who do we like best? Who’s got the most friends?

Elvis at his best, in a nice cat suit and a big chunky belt around his hips, and with his lip curved into his trademark sneer could have stepped out onto the stage and belted out his best song of all time and if he had a Union Flag on his back he’d still have been wallowing down at the bottom with the Irish.

(A slight aside for a moment – what WERE the Irish thinking of with the girl in the Snow White costume and the funny drum? Did they find her and her pals in a pub and dare them to do it? It reminded me of the Father Ted episode where Ted and Dougal were entered in the contest to prevent Ireland from winning and having to pay for hosting another contest. My Lovely Horse would have wiped the floor with this year’s Irish entrant. Oh and don’t get me started on the French chap with the cat on his collar or the Swede with the silver chest wig).

Anyway, I digress. Despite the UK having the second most successful music industry in the world (first place going to the only country everyone seems to dislike even more than us) new Europe thinks we are a joke. And it’s not as if they aren’t having a joke themselves. The Ukrainian entrant in his/her silver ‘Christopher Biggins meets Dame Edna’ outfit was leaping round the stage shouting out random numbers in German. The eastern bloc pulled off lots of ‘Mad Max Post-Apocalypse’ drum bands and girls in leather trousers to appeal to the ‘dirty old man’ vote. But despite all of that the winner proved that you don’t have to look like a supermodel to win – and if your backing singers/dancers look like a bad advert for 1970s hairspray that won’t necessarily get in the way either.

On to the presentation – what a stunning arena they had this year. I don’t suppose anyone in the hall could see a thing – it was about twice the size of the new Wembley Arena and the guys with the buttons to control the lighting were having a ball. Who ever guessed the land of sauna and Nokia could be so over the top? The presenters were marginally less irritating than many I’ve seen and the lady presenter stuck to a less than average number of wardrobe changes – I guess they needed the wardrobe budget to keep feeding the meter for the electricity bills. The alleged ‘dream come true’ fairy presenter in the pink dress was utterly mind-numbingly dreadful to a degree not seen since Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood presented the Brit Awards back in 1989. Even the contestants seemed to be embarrassed by her.

Our entry – OK, I’m not going to pretend it was a stunner although I have to confess I quite liked it in an ironic retro kind of way. The sound engineers didn’t do them any favours (no chance of anyone in Reykjavik picking up the saucy innuendo of ‘would you like some salty nuts?’ or ‘something to suck on for landing sir?’ with such lousy sound quality) and I don’t know why they picked up a couple of needless dancers for the show. Never mind – their shoulders were broad, they took it on the chin and at least they sang in tune.

Could Royaume Uni ever get back in the top five? The way things are going at the moment I’d have to say the hell will freeze over and the lady in the pink frock will be president of Finland before it’s likely to happen. Even if we set aside the fact that nobody likes the UK (although ironically half of Eastern Europe seems to want to live here – welcome!) that doesn’t really explain it. Most of the eastern countries hate Russia even more than they hate us but they are near enough geographically to know that it’s best to be nice to the neighbours. The Balkan bloc can put aside decades, if not centuries, of hating each other and play nice on Eurovision night whilst we can only drum up a bit of token support from Ireland and Malta. And speaking of Malta, how come tiddly countries get the same amount of votes as big ones? If Germany got a vote for every region and we got one for each county then maybe we’d stand a chance. When Iceland and Germany hold the same power you can only see it as a form of ‘getting their own back’ on the EU where the number of votes you get on little matters like politics, economics and such like depends on how big you are. In the ‘real world’ big is beautiful but Eurovision gives the little guys the chance to thumb their noses at the other kids who live in the bigger houses and whose dads drive bigger cars.

But just think how awful it would be if we had to nominate 40 or 50 different songs for the various counties, or even just one each for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – it’s hard enough getting one tune you can hum along to without cringing. The rest of Europe always complains that we get multiple teams in the football tournaments but it doesn’t seem to improve our chances of winning. And how long would the voting take? – it would make the recent Scottish elections and the hanging chads of the US presidential election before last look like a walk in the park.

OK, so I’ve had my little rant and let off steam. I know that next year we’ll do the same thing – pick a song without a hope in hell of winning – head off to Belgrade with our flags and get humiliated again but with a stiff British upper lip. After all if you had a great song would cast it like ‘pearls before swine’ onto the stage of Eurovision? And you know what? I’ll be at home on my giant pink leather sofa with a bottle of white and some nibbles and I’ll be putting myself through it ALL OVER AGAIN like an England football fan with three lions on my shirt and sod-all hope in my heart. Because when it comes down to it, it is Eurovision and you just can’t miss it, can you?

Summary: An irresistable evening of self-flagellation