I’d spent the past few days sick at home, watching the foxes in the back yard and reminding myself that they’re meant to be there, when someone asked what I planned to do for Eurovision this year. I’d forgotten that it’s on next Saturday, so it looks like it’ll be a quiet one at home. Originally I had planned to be at the event in person this year, but then Finland went and won the thing so that Eurovision 2007 is being hosted in one of the few cities even more cripplingly expensive than London.
Before the contest even begins, Portugal can celebrate being the country with the longest odds on winning for two years running. (Is this a case of My Lovely Horse?) After threatening that they WERE GONNA MAKE US SMILE last year, this year their singer, distinctively named Sabrina, is offering more of a soft sell:
Come dance with me
Through the waves of adventure
And I promise I’ll give you
Oceans of tenderness
The wind told me
You will always be my partner
That’s tantamount to an offer to polish your hooves every day.
Portugal probably won’t make the final, where the lowest-rated country with guaranteed entry is Lithuania. These were the guys who turned up last year with an act consisting of six blokes in suits yelling “We are the winners of Eurovision so vote for us” for three minutes, and blow me down it almost worked. Unfortunately success has gone to their heads and they’re now going for an earnest, mopey, Ireland style of what I presume is a ballad.
Words lose their sense
when I feel you near
when I touch your hands
I’m trying not to think
that at break of dawn
You’ll be gone and I’ll be lost, numb and all alone
According to the Eurovision website the band’s named 4FUN, which I think is a typo of 4MUM.
The UK has an excellent chance of nul points this year, thanks to the voters of Britain selecting a Stock, Aitken and Waterman reject act that is basically (hello Australian readers) the airline stewards sketch from Fast Forward, only even gayer. Also, they wave Union Jacks around at the end, because the rest of Europe finds the British so endearing. It’s like the French having a song with a second verse about correcting the hosts’ pronunciation, and then complaining afterward that it didn’t get many votes. In fact, that may have happened sometime in the 1980s.
Coming later this week: the Eurovision Drinking Game, substantially revised to take into account the new vote-counting method and last year’s near-hospitalisation for alcohol poisoning.
An almost complete review of last year’s event can be accessed from here.
