Eurovision Latest

I am less excited about Eurovision this year but nonetheless I know I owe you, my faithful reader, an update on what's hot.

After a butchers at the Irish Times last week, an illuminating article spoke about their entry, described as "High School Musical meets Pink." The act is Sinead Mulvey with Black Daisy and they have a pop song called Et Cetera. Sinead, pictured, was shown in the paper wearing bright pink shiny leggings - not a good look on anyone, so I hope she has a stylist for the Moscow final.

The writer was pessimistic saying that Ireland has never had great success with pop songs: its winning entries were ballads. It concedes the entry is slightly better than last year's entry from Dustin the turkey puppet, but asks if broadcaster RTE is deliberately fielding a duff entry to avoid winning the contest and having to spend millions on the final next year.

I always had similar Sore Misgivings (as quoth by Mrs Fussey in Carry On Camping) about the BBC, but this year they do appear to have pushed the boat out a little by hiring Andrew Lloyd-Webber to write the song, even if it is performed by a nobody.

The Irish Times refers to the Lord's noble entry as a "dirge," which is probably quite an accurate description actually.

Bless him, he writes a good show tune but he isn't that good on pop songs. My belief is that when he said he didn't want to do another casting show this year, he was tied into a three show contract so had no choice but to take the Eurovision poisoned chalice.

Other news: Georgia apparently risks upsetting Russia (again) with their song "We don't wanna put in" which pokes fun at President Putin.

Even the Lord will struggle

The two texts sent by my brothers last night during "Your Country Needs You," the Eurovision song choosing programme, speak volumes.

"Why don't they give us nil points and just let us go on with it" and "absolute shite."

In a strange show that had a useless Moneypenny type character and saw Andrew Lloyd-Webber having silly conversations with Vladimir Putin and various ambassadors about voting for the UK, the "cream of British talent" was rounded up and ceremonially forced to caterwaul to Lord Webber and his companion, a "famous music producer."

The Public and its video entries clearly hadn't passed muster (the talent pool exhausted by X Factor and Britain Hasn't Got Much Talent), so a few West End understudies known by Lloyd Webber were roped in too.

The resulting six acts are depressingly similar to the standard we expect from the BBC and should be binned along with Scooch, Jemini and Andy Abrahams. And here lies the rub. In Lloyd Webber's tour of Eastern Europe, he discovered that a) they all take it a lot more seriously than we do, b) they accuse us of not taking it seriously enough, and c) they don't vote for us because we field amateur singers and bad songs.

Simple. And before you smirk and laugh at the standard of other Eurovision entries, at least the Russian winner last year is a huge act in his own country. Not someone who sings badly in dingy clubs, a rip-off of The Stylistics or a couple of twins who cry at the slightest provocation. Can we seriously imagine them holding that huge Moscow arena, and a hundred million viewers in thrall? A ridiculous notion.

For such a big show we need not only The Song that Lloyd Webber is going to write, but The Act to do it justice. A proper group or singer, not has-beens. Plus, instead of begging Eastern Europe to vote for us - which is as likely as a snowstorm in June - we should be forging an alliance with Germany, France and Spain. We four fund the Eurovision and we're all in the same position with lowly scores. And if we all have another bad year, I vote we withdraw our funding and exit the damn thing.

The Lord to the Eurovision Rescue

Poor old Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Having told the BBC he didn't want to do another casting show this year he was then lumbered with the Eurovision Song Contest, both writing the song and choosing the act. He admits it's a poisoned chalice but, credit to him, says he's had a few of those in his career so what's another one?

I don't care much for his musicals - they're overblown and schmaltzy to me - but having a "name" involved with Eurovision is progress. Plus he's managed to secure the vote of Russian President Vladimir Putin. One vote we can count on! Hurrah. I wish though we weren't going for complete unknowns. It's such a big show with so many viewers that I can't imagine an unknown is going to be able to be able to give their best, with nerves and stage fright. A lot of our unknowns have performed very badly (Jemini, anyone? Our first with "nil points").

Anyway the show is on tomorrow - Your Country Needs You - so let's hope this year we get a good act and a good song, although that doesn't necessarily guarantee a good result!

Find us the song and we can win Eurovision again

Across Britain today over the Sunday brisket the conversation will be dominated by one topic: Eurovision.

We narrowly avoided the dreaded "nul points" last night thanks to Ireland and Malta, but we still finished second from bottom.

Serbia won, so I'll be going round to the bookies to collect my winnings tomorrow. A surprising winner really; the singer looked like Jeanette Krankie and she was accompanied by women in suits who looked like jailers. It was a powerful ballad of lost love (or something), as were a lot of the eastern European entries. Distinct schism between their songs and the puerile formulaeic nonsense of western Europe.

Of course today there will be a lot Meanwhile of angst and hand rubbing across western Europe. "We can never win", "It's the Eastern bloc vote," "we should pull out," etc etc.

Tosh! The new reality is that the countries which have joined Eurovision do tend to vote for neighbours rather than the song, but that doesn't mean that a song with breakthrough can't win. Look at Finland last year. They'd never won before and they're not the sort of country normally backed by any others than the Nordics.

If you look at the songs from the western European countries present - a pathetic number - they were largely terrible. Terrible. Ireland had a weak stereotypical song and the worse performance of the night. The singer was flat: it was like Jemini (nul points) all over again. Germany was a little Frank Sinatra-esque and actually not a bad song, but too sophisticated for the show. France, well, let's draw a veil over that one. Spain with a boy band could potentially have been good but it was very naff.

The UK's was so outdated, so cheesy. It may have been ok in the times of Bucks Fizz, but not in 2007. And it's no use being outraged, people. When we chose the UK song, the BBC fielded a panel of young Europeans and NONE of them said they liked Scooch. Maybe next year you'll listen.

So if we want to improve our chances, we need a better quality song and performer. Let's stop these endless TV shows that bank roll the West End productions of millionaires like Andrew Lloyd-Webber and turn the format into finding a song for Europe. This would be a great showcase for songwriting talent.

Let's stop trying to revive the careers of has-beens and again let's choose who sings in a week-by-week talent competition for song and performer.

Meanwhile, to restore the balance to Eurovision, have two semin-finals, one for western Europe and one for eastern Europe. It won't mean the end of the bloc vote but it means a more representative blend of countries, and hopefully the likes of Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malta and Norway will return: it was sad without them.

When all's said and done, last night's show was wonderfully staged and very entertaining. Drawing 300 million viewers, it must surely have one of the biggest audiences of the year and as such should be taken seriously by the UK and the BBC. We brought the world the Beatles: we should not limp out cowed by the defeat of Scooch. I'm off to collect my twenty quid.