eurosongs are not
what people are voting for.
they vote for control.
As has become an annual tradition, our friend, The Wise Woman of Wigan, came round for our Eurovision evening. Normally, we cook the food of the hosting country. This year it was Finland, which isn’t known for its culinary diversity. I haven’t seen many Finnish Restaurants about, even in the posh bits of Notting Hill which tend to value geographical obscurity over taste.
All we could come up with was Gravadlax and Flatbread. So, we decided to do a Smorgesbord, or a Lordisbord (in tribute to last year’s winners, the demonic-faced Lordi) washed down with copious amounts of vodka.
The Fins are a gothic lot, or so it seems, which no doubt comes from living in a twilight world up the cold end of Europe.
The competition wasn’t as exciting as in recent years, despite the gallimaufry of musical styles. Opera was represented by Slovenia (a soprano with a glowing palm which cast light on her face in an eerie manner as she belted out her tune, and a good belt it was too.)
Latvia sent out an El Divo operatic top-hatted combo who appeared on stage one by one in decreasing degrees of handsomeness. I imagine it was a difficult decision as to whether to send the ugly ones out first and gradually increase the cute factor, or do it the other way round. The point is academic anyway as they never got near the finishing line.
There was a lot of penny-whistley Titanic type Celtic music and the usual round of Turkish-techno numbers, but the star was undoubtedly Verka Serduchka, from the Ukraine, a blend of Su Pollard, Dame Edna Everage and Timmy Mallett, and his ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’, a crazy techno-pop nightmare that had ‘Eurovision Winner’ stamped all over it.
Unfortunately, as is always the case with Eurovision, the voting was all over the place and Ukraine was pipped at the post by a dreary power-ballad from a Serbian woman who looked like Joe Pasquale.
They was robbed.
I said this week that the UK (Scooch, singing ‘Flying The Flag’) would either do really well, or very badly. We ended up joint second from last with France, the only country beneath us being Ireland with their dreadful penny-whistly ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’ number.
Fired up with Eurovision madness we drank and debated until 4am, while listening to music of ancient times (Well, not that ancient. It was mostly, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, and a smattering of Dolly Parton, although I did manage to sneak in a Sparks album somewhere in the middle).
Not many people seem to realise that Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ was written and recorded long before by Dolly Parton.I’ve always thought of Dolly’s version as a sincere expression of amour for another human being while Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ sounds like a threat from a stalker with enormous lungs.
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1 comment:
I keep hoping someone else will remember that Scooch were not the first lot to come up with their *clever* gimmick. Alan Cumming and his co-stars did it first in his sit com 'The High Life'back in the 1990s - wearing their cabin crew uniforms, they performed their entry to the Eurovision song contest, "Bif-Baf-Bof, I wanna have it off 'til I cough". The difference being their version was MEANT to be so bad it was funny. You can probably find it on dvd somewhere.
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