Wednesday, May 12, 2004
20 AMAZING THINGS ABOUT EUROVISION*
Last year, we went into great detail about all the entries to the Eurovision Song Contest, so our readers got a comprehensive guide to what was what. This year, we've been too busy getting drunk and watching Bad Girls, so you will just have to make do with these 20 pointers. Hooray for progress!
1. The UK is being represented by someone whose real name is James Mullet, which seems infinitely more appropriate, no matter which way you want to look at it.
2. There are an amazing 36 countries in it this year, which would make for a very long and boring evening, except...
3. ...some of them have to battle through the new semi-final stage before Terry Wogan has the opportunity to be sarcastic about them while pissed on Baileys.
4. This semi-final can be seen tonight at 8pm on BBC3, and it will be hosted by Liquid News (RIP) presenting bloke Paddy O'Connell and Queen Lorraine Kelly.
5. Team lowculture will not be watching it on BBC3, however. We will be watching it in Istanbul. Hooray!
6. Of the acts in the semi-final, Belarus should be put through automatically, so that they have to hold next year's Eurovision in some kind of cow shed or village hall.
7. The fittest male contestants are Jonatan Cerrada (France, left) and Jonsi (Iceland, right). James Fox would do, we suppose, if there was nobody else around and it was getting near the end of the night. And some of the Turkish group might be quite acceptable too, although this remains to be seen.
8. William Hill are offering 7-2 on Greece to win with Shake It, probably because it sounds exactly like the song that won last time.
9. You'll get 20-1 on James Fox to win, but frankly you would probably be better off betting on lowculture – and we're not even in it!
10. The evening's entertainment will include something called Abba - Our Last Ever Video. It may have something to do with puppets. We're just not sure.
11. We met Eurovision uber-expert Liam Jarnecki in a pub last week, and he was apoplectic with rage about the prospect of one of the acts winning, but to be honest, we were a bit pissed and can't remember which one it was.
12. The pub in question was the Retro Bar in London, and we found ourselves there quite by chance on Eurovision Night, which they hold on the first Thursday of every month. Apparently.
13. By a strange twist of fate, this was the second month running we had turned up there on Eurovision Night.
14. Anyway, the evening's entertainment took the form of a mock contest, and the assembled throng was split up into different juries. We didn't have a jury, although we did do our best to persuade the chairman of the Maltese jury to let us join his. Ahem. He was having none of it, though.
15. The point of all this (and yes, there is one), is that the bummers of London chose It Hurts, the Swedish entry, as their winner – most probably because there is a rumour going around that the song is about taking it up the arse ("Hurts, oh it hurts, really hurts, in the middle of the night", and so on). And if there's one thing the gays know about, it's Eurovision, so we reckon Lena Philipsson must be in with a good chance.
16. Other ones we like are: On Again... Off Again (Malta come up trumps once again with a hilarious disco/opera fusion); Just Can't Wait Until Tonight (a "proper" song sung by a 23-year-old German boy who is rather unfortunate looking); and Stronger Every Minute (a Radio 2-friendly Katie Melua-alike from Cyprus).
17. The finalists all went for a river cruise in Istanbul the other day. It rained, so they all went below deck. Then it stopped, so they all came back out again.
18. Brian McFadden has written the Irish entry. It's a bit rubbish. He should stick to not being in Westlife.
19. UK entrant James Fox is to have an armed guard. Not to be outdone, the Israeli entrant is having 12.
20. If we can get the internet to work in Turkey, we will be dishing all the Euro dirt as the week goes on, so keep visiting!
*In reality, considerably fewer than 20 of these facts could reasonably be described as "amazing". But at least we tried!
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