Eurovision freakshow contest
Sunday, May 13, 2007Comment, or trackback from your own site.
You might as well watch the Eurovision song contest with the sound off these days, according to EuroGuru Tim Moore. Winning, apparently, has everything to do with the visual theatrics of each country’s 180 seconds of glory. He should know - he’s written a whole book about it.
Perhaps he’s right: the winner and the runner-up of the Helsinki muso-circus both glued me to the television. Firstly the bottom-slapping antics of Su Pollard and Gary Glitter’s secret lovechild (left), and secondly the is-he, isn’t-she Jack Osborne impersonator from Serbia whose whiny key-change-tastic sopfest romped home to first place. They were mesmerising, and even when you put visuals aside they scored about a million points on our home-made scoresheet. But then, so did Scooch (they even featured a band member with an interchangeable head), and they scored just 19 points. Despite having all the right ingredients to avoid nul points, the poor souls will be flying their flag at half mast for the rest of the week. So perhaps success at Eurovision is always going to be completely random, political and downright bizarre.
And what next for Scooch et al? Will they trade in their remaining traces of dignity like 1992 Irish winner Linda Martin, whose lingering fascination with all things EBU led her to present the results of the televote this year? After their brief stint on European airwaves, will they be sticking to more domestic routes in future? Are there any airlines that fly directly between student unions?
The trouble with Scooch is that they thought they could bottle camp. Real camp is straight-faced and does not realise how camp it is. Therefore they looked like try-hards, and as if they were mocking the whole thing.
Having said that, they did marginally better than Ireland’s diddly-eye folk song about reuniting Europe. 5 fucking points. Perhaps we should call on the rare powers of Linda Martin one last time …
redkingMay 14th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Scooch didn’t have any elements that would have made them win Eurovision at all but they thought they did because of how the UK treats the contest. We think it is a pisstake. Nearly everyone else in Europe takes it very seriously and an entry such as ours just cements the belief that we don’t really care about Europe and treat it with derision.
Ireland was bloody awful
TrixieMay 14th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Tal - were Finland taking it seriously last year? Or Ukraine this year? To have a first and second place from novelty acts in successive years suggests that several countries - in different parts of Europe - treat it with a healthy dose of sarcasm from time to time. Which is a good thing!
SimonMay 14th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Scooch were the worst and that’s saying something! I wanted to hide behind the couch when they were on. And the innuendos “subtly” interlaced through crap lyrics…poor, so poor! It all looked like a GCSE drama production. One that would score a D.
SaimaMay 14th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
This was my first Eurovision and I am pretty much speechless! I thought that Serbia was the worst entry, apparently my taste does not follow the rest of Europe, personally i like Bulgaria (?) the one with the drums, even if she sounded off-key, it was still fun to listen to!
AmandaMay 16th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Perhaps we should make an entry next year- I play drums a bit.
Simon PearsonJanuary 18th, 2008 at 2:26 am