It’s 2 full months until Sweden hosts this year’s Eurovision Song Contest having won last year. As if it weren’t exciting enough for the Swedes to be on the threshold of NATO membership, they now have the opportunity of becoming Europeans of the year.
As happens annually, hundreds of trainloads and busloads will convene at the Exhibition Centre, people will dress and behave how they like, crosspatch men will mutter grunts of disapproval, and more people on our beleaguered continent than you think will throw a party.
In the old days, it was all terrific fun (I suppose it was all just jolly japes, trying to decipher all the languages and laugh at the costumes).
The UK didn’t win often so whenever we miraculously did, it was always the same frightfully well-spoken BBC lady who couldn’t speak foreign languages for toffee.
But she gave out the scores with a plomb. She was lucky it was the Cold War, so it was decades before anyone east of Berlin was allowed to take part.
The Russians might have won a couple of times but I wouldn’t recommend they try again.
The French never voted for the UK
In fact, people used to be much more political than they are now. Greece always used to vote for Cyprus and vice versa; all the Scandinavian countries voted for each other; although the Finns didn’t join it for a long time.
A point made once was that on more than one occasion in the 1970’s, Spain, at the time a fascist dictatorship, garnered more points than it deserved. I suppose Franco did somehow have the ability to gerrymander the vote, though heaven knows how.
All I know is that the French NEVER voted for the UK.
This year, I happen to have stumbled over the British entry. We haven’t won since 1997, so it would be superb if we did.
Our representative is called Olly Alexander and his song is called “Dizzy”. It’s a sure-fire disco-type floor-filler.
Oh unfortunately, we, the plodding audience are banned from dancing, so Olly Alexander will have to manage alone. There is no need for us to lose!
Eurovision has given us ABBA (those Swedes again), the Irish (more often than they’ve shaken a stick at), not to mention all these transscaucasians and Australlians, who are about as European as the polynesian islanders.
