It was a statesman-like performance in the face of tragic defeat. “I urge my
fans to be dignified,” said Dustin the Turkey, hiding his disappointment
after losing in the semi-final of the 2008 Eurovision song contest. “I don’t
want riots on the street.”
Dustin was Ireland’s big hope in the competition; he was also a glove puppet.
He was speaking after his song, Irelande Douze Pointe , had failed to be
awarded a single point by the judges.
No wonder some Irish were doubting the wisdom of asking him to represent them
on the international stage. Yet why not a singing turkey? With its
reputation for sequined eccentricity, the Eurovision song contest is almost
beyond parody.
Last night’s victor was — surprise, surprise — Russia. In the fashion of an
old corrupt Soviet election, the win had been announced by the BBC five days
before the voting even started. But if it had been won by a barber shop
quartet from Alpha Centauri, eyelids would have remained unbatted. Terry
Wogan would have simply remarked on their outfits before poking fun at the
host nation, which this year happened to be Serbia.
Every year since 1980 he has proudly presented the show to its British
audience while quietly ridiculing the songs, the other presenters, the
hairdos and the costumes. And a good job, too — for beneath the high camp
and daffy lyrics, the competition is in danger of becoming a simmering pit
of international politics.
Last year Ukraine’s entry, a transvestite, was accused of slipping the words
“Russia, goodbye!” into her song as a gesture of support for her country’s
“Orange revolution”. She denied the accusation, insisting that the offending
words were Mongolian for “condensed milk”. (Does John Prescott know that?)
Last night there was an apparent change of heart. Ukraine came second after
awarding Russia 12 points, its highest marks. “Ukraine just wants to make
absolutely sure the old electric and oil keeps running,” said Wogan.
In 2003 Britain’s failure to get a single vote was widely seen as punishment
for the Iraq war. Last night we came joint last despite Andy Abraham singing
his heart out.
Now tensions are rising over suspicions of “bloc voting”. Last week Wogan
claimed that eastern European countries had banded together to prevent
western ones from winning. He declared that an “iron curtain has descended
across Eurovision”. Iron, but with a taffeta lining.
On top of all this, rival countries accuse the British of failing to watch the
show with a sufficiently serious attitude.
“Terry Wogan is a problem because he makes it ridiculous,” said Bjorn
Erichsen, the director of Eurovision. “I know he is very popular and maybe
that is the reason why a lot of people watch. But one day he will have to
retire and the BBC will have to find someone else. It will be interesting to
see if that attitude changes.
“The BBC gets a very large audience but chooses to represent the contest in a
certain way. They take it far more seriously in Sweden. There they have a
genuine love and respect for it.”
Well, of course they do: the contest launched the international career of
Abba, who won in 1974 with Waterloo.
Watching Eurovision with a straight face has become something of a struggle
over the years. Did you happen to notice the singer from Azerbaijan wearing
his wings? If so, did they complement the soaring melody or did you think he
looked like the cloakroom attendant at a gay nightclub?
The less said about the Latvians, who came dressed as pirates, the better. Yet
they were low-key compared with Lordi, Finland’s 2006 entry, who looked like
gruesome survivors from a Lord of the Rings battle scene.
“To the best of my knowledge there’s nothing quite like the Eurovision song
contest for offering up a must-watch mix of good old state-funded
entertainment and high camp,” said Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of Moncole
magazine.
The Eurovision contest began in 1956 with such high hopes. It was yet another
scheme, along with Jeux Sans Frontières and the Common Market, to unite the
continent after the horrors of war. If we could only sing along together to
the jaunty sounds of popular music, went the theory, we would live
side-by-side in perfect harmony. Or as close to perfect harmony as
Eurovision’s performers could manage.
At first it seemed to work, but the cracks in international relations began to
appear. The 1968 contest, it was claimed earlier this month, was rigged by
General Franco, the late Spanish dictator, to make sure his country won. Who
knows what heights Cliff Richard might have gone on to if he and his ditty
Congratulations had not been pushed into second place?
How things have changed. This year Spain sent Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, an
Argentinian, to sing Baila el Chiki Chiki about a woman who “dances with her
panties in her hands”.
In 1969 four songs, including Britain’s Lulu with Boom Bang-a-Bang, tied for
first place, so enraging four other countries — Norway, Finland, Sweden and
Portugal — that they tore up their songsheets and refused to take part the
following year.
Then in 1982 the French remembered they were the land of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Denouncing the contest as “a monument to drivel”, they withdrew. The show
went ahead without them from the glittering surroundings of the Harrogate
conference centre.
France crawled back in 1983 and came eighth.
If the 1980s were the low point of Eurovision — apart from the victory in 1988
of Céline Dion, like Abba a rarity in being a Eurovision performer who went
on to become a huge star — by the 1990s the British audience was
beginning to look at the contest in a new light. It may have been cheesy and
outdated, but it was cheesy and outdated in a fashionable post-modern sort
of a way. Eurovision discovered camp.
By last year 11m people were watching the BBC coverage. Some even held
Eurovision parties. This year the BBC not only offered party tips — “wear
national costume” — but also asked revellers to send pictures to the Flickr
photo- sharing website.
One fan from Leamington Spa is so keen that he sent his notes from the
semi-final. “Much gurning” was his view of the Russian entry. Of the
Moldovan entry he noted, “under-used trumpet”.
Perhaps we do not treat the contest seriously because we know we cannot
dominate it as we used to. Between 1967 and 1977 we were never out of the
top four places. People such as Lulu, Cliff and the Shadows swept all before
them. Last year we came joint 22nd with France.
On the face of it, the old guard, the countries of western Europe, have indeed
been squeezed out by bloc voting from eastern Europe.
“Eurovision was intended to bring us all together, but instead it makes it
manifestly clear how far apart we are,” said Wogan.
Is there any evidence to support this controversial claim? Well, yes there is,
according to Derek Gatherer, an aptly named academic who has been gathering
together recent voting patterns in the contest for analysis.
Gatherer identified three blocs that account for about a third of all votes.
The biggest is what he calls the Balkan bloc: 11 countries that include
Turkey, Albania, various bits that used to be Yugoslavia, Greece, Cyprus,
Bulgaria and Hungary. Next is the Eastern bloc of eight countries, including
Russia, Poland and Ukraine. (Given the degree to which some of the countries
within the Balkan and Eastern blocs hate each other, perhaps Eurovision does
indeed break down barriers.)
“The period since the mid-1990s has seen the emergence of large geographical
voting blocs from previously small voting partnerships,” Gatherer revealed
in a paper pithily entitled Comparison of Eurovision Song Contest Simulation
with Actual Results Reveals Shifting Patterns of Collusive Voting Alliances.
“On at least two occasions the outcome of the contest has been crucially
affected by voting blocs. The structure of these blocs implies that a
handful of centrally placed countries have a higher probability of being
future winners.”
Although the eight Nordic and Baltic states form a so-called Viking Empire,
there is no western European bloc for the UK to belong to. You will not find
the Belgians voting for an Irish turkey.
But we don’t really care about all that, do we? No, we want oddball Finns
singing heavy metal, we want a couple of outfits that look like an explosion
in a sequin factory. Like last year, we want transvestite singers from
Ukraine singing in pidgin English: “Hello, hello everybody! Me English don’t
understand! Let’s speak dance!”
But by last night it appeared that even Wogan had had enough and is
contemplating withdrawing from the fray. “What we have to decide is whether
we want to do this again,” he said. “The western European participants have
to decide if they want to take part in it again because their prospects are
poor.”
— Additional reporting: Sara Dixon
Words fail ...
This year’s lyrical gems at the Eurovision contest included:
With a hii hii hoo and a hii hii hey!
We’re hoisting the flag to be free
We will steal the show,
Jolly Rogers go We are wolves of the sea
— Latvia’s entry, performed by Pirates of the Sea
El Chiki Chiki is a Reaggetton
Dance in Argentina, Serbia and Oregon
Give el Chiki-Chiki to that little sister
With el Chiki-Chiki She’s gonna like it mister!
— Spain’s entry, performed by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre
