It’s May Bank Holiday, time for pootling off to Brighton, huddling under umbrellas while picnicking in the park and, of course, watching our Eurovision entry get trashed with the obligatory “nul points” from those countries which don’t like us. Which seems to be pretty much everybody right now.
I can’t pinpoint the year when the Eurovision Song Contest, the annual cheesefest involving the best and worst of songs from the nations that make up a very generous interpretation of the geographical extent of “Europe”, changed from being about the music to being a chance to thank your friends and bash your enemies. Greece always gives its 12 points to Cyprus and vice versa. Germany always votes for Turkey. Maybe it’s always been about alliances, demographics and political manoeuvering. Or maybe we just like indulging in sour grapes because we haven’t won since Katrina and the Waves shone her light on the event in 1997.
What is sure though is that you either love or hate the annual Song Contest. Few people will admit to watching it; yet next week we’ll all be talking about it. It’s one of those guilty pleasures that we’ll all be talking about around the tea urn at work. And the viewing figures are always massive. Not only that, but more and more countries want to get involved; so much so that semi-finals now have to be held to whittle down the number of entrants appearing in the live show (tonight on BBC1 from 8.00pm). Otherwise it would be like the Crewe By-election and we’d be waiting for the results into the early hours.
So, what of the music? Most famously, of course, Eurovision launched ABBA on the world when they won with “Waterloo” for Sweden in 1974. The now even more famous Celine Dion won for Switzerland in 1988. These days, though, Eurovision is no longer a guaranteed path to international singing glory. Who even remembers last year’s winner Marija Serifovic from Serbia? And while here in the UK, in earlier years we’ve sent headliners such as Cliff Richard and Lulu to represent us, we now tend to pick anyone from the formerly famous to the completely unknown. Last year, Scooch’s entry for the UK (the thoroughly brilliant, camp as a row of pink chiffon tents, but under-appreciated Eurotrash song, “Flying the Flag”) sadly failed to take off:
This year, we have XFactor runner-up Andy Abraham (above) with “Even If”. The problem? It’s a good song. It might even be a great song. Andy sings it brilliantly. But is it too good for Eurovision? Since we have about as much chance of winning Eurovision (or even ending up in the top ten) as The Apprentice’s Michael Sophocles does of bagging the vacancy with Sir Alan Sugar, it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s any good.
Never mind. We’ll still be sitting in front of our TVs this evening, glued to the weirdness that is Eurovision, and listening to Sir Terry Wogan’s increasingly snarky comments about the contestants, the set, the presenters, the jokes and the interval acts. And we’ll be cheering on Andy Abraham, flying the flag for British pop music!
© Carole Gordon 2008