Furthering Cultural Exchange

For the benefit of any Americans who may be reading, I give you: The Eurovision Song Contest. The idea, supposedly, is to celebrate the music of Europe by inviting countries to select a band and a song to perform at a massive gala festival, whereupon the countries vote for the one they feel was the best (each country gives points in ascending scale from 1-12). The winner then gets to host the festival next year. Simple, yes?

Well, not exactly. I don't know how it's viewed on the Continent, but in Britain, the Contest is seen as a great opportunity to laugh at the awful music that the rest of Europe makes. We always vote for an abysmal song, and sit back with a smug look on our faces. Meanwhile, all the poor countries of Europe live in fear of actually winning the contest, as the cost of staging the event is rather expensive (many people believe that Ireland once deliberately threw the contest a few years back because they had won three times in a row, and the state broadcaster simply couldn't afford a fourth win). Every year, the UK commentary is provided by a radio DJ called Terry Wogan, who supplies a withering and sarcastic voice to the proceedings, mocking everything from dress sense to the performances. The night has become a popular kitsch event, where we laugh at the silly Europeans.

And then there's the voting. It's supposed to be based solely on the musical merit of the performances, but as you can imagine, this never occurs. Countries which neighbour each other always tend to give the other the top marks, all the Eastern European countries remember to include Russia, and Greece never gives any points to Turkey. It's as entertaining as the music section.

This year will be remembered as a classic Eurovision Night; long-standing enmities were cast aside as the countries in Europe finally united. Unfortunately, the one thing they can agree on is that they aren't particularly happy with the UK. For the first time in the history of the Contest, Britain received no votes, nul points. That'll teach us to side with the Americans.

The eventual winner was Turkey, thus shocking the world by illustrating that combining "teenage" and "lesbians" isn't a guaranteed way of obtaining success after all. The Russian Mafia is said to be returning to the drawing board for next year's contest. Meanwhile, we'll moan a bit for the next few days about how we got no votes, it's all rubbish anyway, and isn't it all political, forgetting of course, that's entirely why we watch the thing in the first place…