Finally, something worth paying the license fee for. That’s right folks last night was the Eurovision song contest, featuring all the national stereotypes and camp you can shake a forest at, let alone a stick. The joy of Eurovision comes from the fact that you know you are in for a laugh. Maybe not in the scandanavian countries where they take it almost to seriously but for the rest of us sane people, it’s a chance to glory in the joys of bad singing and even worse sets.
Perhaps the most cringeworthy bit is the host and hostess who turn up attempt a few jokes(in English which is probably not the first language)which always lose something in translation and leave at least a third of the crowd/audience looking puzzled. Cringeworthy yes, but also the best bit, forget the singing, this is where the Eurovision must be fully appreciated, imagine the whole continent(and the countries no one else wants) coming together as one but not being able to find a common joke that all 731,00,000 of us can appreciate.
The main spectacle this year (after a natty showing by Circue du soliel) had some good stuff in it, Malta, Ajerbaijan(my choice of winner) and the Turkey all captures the spirit well and really i wouldn’t mind stuff like this being on the radio all the time, i might tune in to some music FM if it was. Beats all these gangsta rappers and body showing teens. The joy as ever though wa the Finnish dance act that had the lead rapper dressed as an 80′s New York youth with cap peak to the back doing those trendy arm movements that rappers do. Not to be outdone Greece weighed in with a guy( looking like he wanted to sell time shares or be the Aegean John Travolta) who made cheese an art form, he did some jumping some clichéd Europop lyrics and i’m sure at one point there was chest hair.
Mime artists, belly dancers were all involved, as was an Argentinian circus troupé at the interval. They had an odd idea of putting people in polythene swimming pools and lowering them down over the audience, i’d like to know what it symbolised as i’m sure it must have but i’m flummoxed, mind you if i was going out to millions of people i’d make sure to confuse them as is the spirit of the show.
A small mention for Dita von Teese (the only burlesque dancer that people know), why she was there i have no idea, she didn’t do much really, apart from that pose that all models from the 1930-1950′s seemed to do. You know the one hands on hips looking back over her shoulder at the camera, in fact she did look like she could have been from back then only she was in colour. Her hourglass figure warrants a mention predictably, with corset pulled tight she had was, what i believe, is known as the preferred figure that men like on women. Maybe this is true but i wasn’t getting it. There is such a thing as to thin at the waist and indeed such a thing as to well proportioned. I prefer a real woman’s figure and a slightly less 1950′s look. I wonder if younger girls watching realised that the corset was making her thin. Just a thought.
So to the voting. Again a load of people speaking what is probably not their first language atempting to make jokes (and at one point an attempted one minute silence from Slovenia because they hadn’t been in the competition for two years). The whole charade is depressing yet hilarious, the uncomfortable faces and the to long pauses, the sheer inanity of it all kept me hooked. There was less chance for political voting this year and that meant we had a chance to win. We came fifth(177 points) and as the winner with a record number of points(387) was Norway, nicely coming full circle on this review. The song of course was cheese, the guy looked liked he’d been practising for a full year in some militant pop camp and so on that evidence deserved to win. I look forward to next years show and hope it is worse and so therefore better than this year.
