When "expert" juries across 39 countries and members of the public across Europe, with enough interest to express an opinion, combine to give you nil, null, zero points you have surely to begin taking notice, dontcha?
The Eurovision Song Contest is a bit of fun. It's crap songs in an over-blown setting, performed with camp enthusiasm in ridiculous clothing buried deep enough in visual gimmicks to make the audience forget that this is the musical equivalent of a selling handicap in horse racing, and that they've paid through the nose to be there.
The winners by ze country mile were an etiolated band of Northern Italian boys, excited by their own sexuality, playing a faux-rock number with lyrics growled by their lead singer, who clearly saw himself as a stallion, even though he looked like a refugee from The Sweet. For this they received 524 votes, whilst our chubby contender, dressed by a homelessness charity in a discarded fur coat, strode aimlessly about accumulating no votes. And it wasn't a measure of how much the rest of Europe hates us, it was an accurate reflection of the gulf. Ours was the worst "song for Europe" since Father Ted's "My Lovely Pony". It had next to nothing to say and still didn't manage to say it. It was performed by a singer who would be classified as a bad singer on I Can See Your Voice. Charm, wit, presentation, appearance, whatever scale you care to mention, he registered zero and then when the votes were cast he had the effrontery to own his abysmal failure and take cheers, as if somehow a verdict stretching all the way to Australia was wrong.
Dear old Graham Norton would have been wise to revert to his own Father Ted character and tell the entire unpalatable truth until the fat boy finally gave up singing forever. We have a massive music industry in the UK the size of the whole of the rest of Europe's put together. We literally have millions of people who can carry a note, lots of them look really good, are really good fun, love to perform and loads of them have real actual talent ..... yet, not for the first time, we choose someone who lacks all these qualities. The Beeb might as well have sent Martin Bashir.
"I feel so sorry for James," bleated Graham Norton as we prepared to re-enter national mourning. I don't feel sorry for James, the effin' Giant Peach couldn't have done a worse job.
Couldn't we hand it over to ITV so at least the song and singer chosen might be commercially successful? At least then the rest of Europe could avoid voting for us, because they hate us. If we came last because we sent something good, then at least Eurovision could measure itself. Albania FFS sent a good singer. It didn't do them much good, but at least they had a good singer. There has to be a point at which being sh1t at being sh1t becomes a failure, not a success, and we passed that back down the euro road years ago.
James, you were flatter than Marc Almond on Tainted Love, your movement was worse than Judy Murray's on Strictly, your song took forgettable to a previously unattainable level at which it was gone before it ended, you looked middle-aged ........ though you might have a future in Last of the Summer Wine, were not most of the others involved already dead, and of course everyone loved you back stage; they all knew they weren't going to come last.
When you are known as a song writer and you've lived long enough to put on weight, and nobody has asked you to perform before, THERE'S A REASON! Okay?
The Eurovision Song Contest is a bit of fun. It's crap songs in an over-blown setting, performed with camp enthusiasm in ridiculous clothing buried deep enough in visual gimmicks to make the audience forget that this is the musical equivalent of a selling handicap in horse racing, and that they've paid through the nose to be there.
The winners by ze country mile were an etiolated band of Northern Italian boys, excited by their own sexuality, playing a faux-rock number with lyrics growled by their lead singer, who clearly saw himself as a stallion, even though he looked like a refugee from The Sweet. For this they received 524 votes, whilst our chubby contender, dressed by a homelessness charity in a discarded fur coat, strode aimlessly about accumulating no votes. And it wasn't a measure of how much the rest of Europe hates us, it was an accurate reflection of the gulf. Ours was the worst "song for Europe" since Father Ted's "My Lovely Pony". It had next to nothing to say and still didn't manage to say it. It was performed by a singer who would be classified as a bad singer on I Can See Your Voice. Charm, wit, presentation, appearance, whatever scale you care to mention, he registered zero and then when the votes were cast he had the effrontery to own his abysmal failure and take cheers, as if somehow a verdict stretching all the way to Australia was wrong.
Dear old Graham Norton would have been wise to revert to his own Father Ted character and tell the entire unpalatable truth until the fat boy finally gave up singing forever. We have a massive music industry in the UK the size of the whole of the rest of Europe's put together. We literally have millions of people who can carry a note, lots of them look really good, are really good fun, love to perform and loads of them have real actual talent ..... yet, not for the first time, we choose someone who lacks all these qualities. The Beeb might as well have sent Martin Bashir.
"I feel so sorry for James," bleated Graham Norton as we prepared to re-enter national mourning. I don't feel sorry for James, the effin' Giant Peach couldn't have done a worse job.
Couldn't we hand it over to ITV so at least the song and singer chosen might be commercially successful? At least then the rest of Europe could avoid voting for us, because they hate us. If we came last because we sent something good, then at least Eurovision could measure itself. Albania FFS sent a good singer. It didn't do them much good, but at least they had a good singer. There has to be a point at which being sh1t at being sh1t becomes a failure, not a success, and we passed that back down the euro road years ago.
James, you were flatter than Marc Almond on Tainted Love, your movement was worse than Judy Murray's on Strictly, your song took forgettable to a previously unattainable level at which it was gone before it ended, you looked middle-aged ........ though you might have a future in Last of the Summer Wine, were not most of the others involved already dead, and of course everyone loved you back stage; they all knew they weren't going to come last.
When you are known as a song writer and you've lived long enough to put on weight, and nobody has asked you to perform before, THERE'S A REASON! Okay?