…and brought a lotta schlock home

Ibuprofen? Check.

Barf bag? Check.

Crackers? Check.

Everybody ready? OK, we’ll begin. It’s time, once again, for the year’s biggest onslaught of televisual cheese. There will be sequins, there will be glitter, there will very possibly be blood, some of which may be mine because before this is over my eyes and ears will very likely start bleeding. Yes, it’s Eurovision night. Whoopee.

A disclaimer before we begin: I am not witnessing this live, because I don’t drink – since I can’t use alcohol to dull the pain, I lack the testicular fortitude to put myself through this without the ability to resort to the fast-forward button if necessary. And I got new glasses last week, and the new ones don’t have the anti-glare coating (most of the time, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference for me, and it starts to rub off if you have the habit of absent-mindedly cleaning your glasses on your T-shirt), so I reserve the right to hide behind a cushion if things get really dicey. The secret to surviving a Eurovision telecast, remember, is to prepare in advance for every eventuality. Including, possibly, your own death in a tragic and horrible sequin/wind machine accident.

Anyway. So. Last year’s winner, if you’re lucky enough to remember, was the fabulous Loreen. No, not Soreen, Loreen. I remember her name, but not her face or her song, which at Eurovision is par for the course for acts that don’t dress like Rosa Klebb after a glitter explosion. Loreen is Swedish, so this year le concours Eurovision is coming to us from beautiful sunny Malmö, capital of Scania and home of the Twisting Torso. That’s a tall building, not a corpse in a Henning Mankell novel, Ystad is 35 miles away.

Our host – in the UK, at least – is Graham Norton. Again. We open with a montage starring a caterpillar, which appears to be touring Europe by boat, train and moped. I think it’s supposed to be cute. It’s not. And of course the caterpillar is now turning into a butterfly in front of the Oresund bridge. A Swedish footballer welcomes us to Malmo (I found the right accent once, I’m not going to do it again) from the side of the Twisting Torso, and now a big choir starts off the proceedings by singing something tuneless. The music is by Benny Andersson, the lyrics are by Bjorn Ulvaeus, and one of the ladies in the choir has a very large gap in her teeth.

Ooh. Now people carrying the flags of all nations are entering via a catwalk over the audience. One young woman seems to be wearing a swan and pink hotpants. These are either the contestants, or a glimpse of Vivienne Westwood’s Primark collection.

Yes, Mr. Andersson, we know you know what a pedal point is. The choir are singing something about a legacy in song. It is, shall we say, statistically unlikely that any of this evening’s victims contestants will end up leaving us a musical legacy that in any way approaches that of Mr. Andersson and Mr. Ulvaeus, but hope springs eternal. That’s why we’re all watching.

Synchronised flag-waving. It’s like ‘One Day More’, without the knowledge that nearly everyone on stage will be dead by the end of the second half.

Here’s our Swedish hostess. And a lot of animated butterflies. She’s wearing what looks like a fuschia replica of the Shard. Her name is Petra Mede, and I’m not going to attempt a pronunciation. She’s talking about Bjorn and Benny, and three lines in she’s winkingly referred to ‘Dancing Queens’. Abba were sadly unavailable, so we have to make do with bb. Agnetha and Anni-Frid seem to have elected to stay home. Probably wise.

Ah, I see. The base of her pyramid dress is wide because it has to hide the tug-o’-war team pulling ropes to keep her smile in place.

Lines do not open until all acts have performed. Seems sensible, but this is only the second time they’ve done this.

May the best song win, Petra says. It usually doesn’t, but what the hell.

Aaaand we’re off. Song #1. Amandine Bourgeois, representing France with the charmingly-titled ‘L’enfer et Moi’ – ‘Hell and Me’. We’ve just seen a montage of Amandine shopping and having her hair done. Hell, presumably, is what happens next. She’s wearing a leather feather duster that’s cut well above her knees, and she seems to want to be a cross between Amy Winehouse and Courtney Love. Team France have possibly put more effort into artfully smudging her eyeshadow than crafting her song’s melody. It’s not bad, and for Eurovision it’s refreshingly rough around the edges, and… oh. Now she’s screaming. Possibly she’s already seen this.

Song #2. The next performance contains flashing images and strobe effects, says the caption on the screen. Don’t they all. Lithuania, Andrius Pojavis, ‘Something’. His favourite part of his body, according to Mr. Norton, is his arms. He wrote the song himself. It’s a sort of u2/early-era The Killers mashup. He’s terribly sincere – white T-shirt, black leather jacket, zombie poses, closes his eyes a lot – but not terribly charismatic. Again, not bad, but pleasantly inoffensive and not really memorable for either the right reasons or the wrong ones. This isn’t what we’re here for.

Now the butterfly is taking us to Moldova, represented in the montage by horses, dancing, and flying lanterns. Song #3, ‘O Mie’ by Aliona Moon. Piano intro, musclebound dancers dressed in white, she seems to be standing behind her dress rather than wearing it, and Emeli Sandé wants her hair back. It’s all Very Meaningful. She’s got a nice voice, and it seems to be about to get very overwrought. Her skirt, strangely, is glowing red as if lit from within, and lightning is being projected across it. And she’s getting taller. Ooh. A lift. And flames projected onto her skirt as the music approaches – please, God – a climax. She ends the song four feet taller than when she began it. At least she didn’t sing ‘Defying Gravity’.

Finland. Song #4, ‘Marry Me’, Krista Siegfrids. I’d rather not, Krista. Thanks anyway. Ah, she’s the lady who was wearing the swan with the pink hotpants in the opening procession. Her backing singers are wearing red frilly rubber aprons, and she’s being carried around by three Inigo Montoya wannabes in Batman masks. The song is generic Eurodisco, and not even good generic Eurodisco. Nicely trashy choreography, but this won’t win. Oh – now she’s got a wedding veil, and a lot of fireworks are going off. That’s what I love about Eurovision. The subtlety. She ends by snogging one of her backing singers.

Song #5. Spain. Y viva Espana. She’s got a Polaroid camera. Who still has one of those? ‘Contigo Hasta El Final’, by ESDM.  Not BSDM, ESDM. Don’t get your hopes up. It starts with a Spanish bagpipe. It’s folksy, the singer is wearing what looks like a courgette flower with gold shoulder trim, and they’re using the wind machine. The guitarist in the brown suit with the shaggy hipster hair has to be on drugs. You possibly would be too, if you’d rehearsed this a few times. Particularly since staying on – or, really, anywhere near – the note is not one of her better skills.

They travelled to Malmo by boat, apparently, and it took a week. How lovely they made it in time so we could all see this.

Belgium. Song #6, ‘Love Kills’ by Roberto Bellarosa. He’s only 18, apparently. Bless. He’s in a dinner jacket and no tie, standing in front of what looks like a selection of IKEA floor lamps, and I think he’s singing in English but I can’t quite tell.  Now the lamps have flown out, and the choreography begins. Oh, bloody hell. Dire sub-Michael Bolton ballad, and the dancers seem to be doing some bizarre cross between a Robert Palmer video and the Funky Chicken. Love kills over and over, apparently. If I don’t fast-forward this, they’re in danger of taking me down with them, and there’s a whole shitload of songs still to go. Moving swiftly on…

…to Estonia. Song #7, ‘Et Uus Saaks Alguse’, by Birgit. Hi, Birgit. A restrained, sweetly sad piano ballad, judging by the first verse. Oh – no, the drums and guitars have kicked in. It’s a 70s MOR knockoff, and I can’t take any more.

Song #8, Belarus,  ‘Solayoh’, by Alyona Lanskaya. The pre-song film montage featured carrot juice and monkeys. This has to be a step up from the last one. Alyona emerges from a six-foot glitterball, her dancers are wearing… well, something white that words can’t really describe, except you can see their bare chests most of the time. The song is a full-on onslaught of Eastern Europe disco WTF, and they seem to have borrowed a bouzouki from Greece. Jets of flame shoot up from the front of the stage, presumably to burn away the shattered remnants of everybody’s dignity. Including mine, for watching. This is pure Eurovision.

Song #9. Malta. He’s a doctor, apparently, and in the pre-song montage we see him walking down a corridor with a stethoscope around his neck. His name is Gianluca, and his song is called ‘Tomorrow’. Hopefully, it’s not that ‘Tomorrow’. He doesn’t appear to be a 10-year-old-girl with red curly hair, but you can never quite tell where the costuming with these things is going to go. We’re back on the folksy side of things again. He’s grinning a bit too much – seemingly with his very prominent eyebrows as well as his mouth – and it would be more charming if he grinned a bit less. Fast-forward time.

Next, Russia. No grandmas this year. Song #10, Dina Garipova, ‘What If’. I think we’re heading into Céline territory here – possibly not a bad tactical move, since Céline, once upon a time, actually won this thing. The song is adult-oriented pop sludge with uplifting/inspirational lyrics, there are four very cleanly-scrubbed backing singers behind her, there’s a melodramatic middle eight, and she’s selling it with absolute conviction. She’s also – and you have to have watched a few of these things to know how unusual this is – hitting all the notes dead-on, even the big ones. Not bad.

Germany. We are again warned about strobe effects, which is redundant at Eurovision. Song #11, ‘Glorious’, by Cascada. It’s an odd cross between full-on Eurodisco and full-on power-ballad, and the strobe effects are more interesting than the song. This is many things, but Glorious is not among them. You can barely hear her singing over the programmed synths. From what I can hear, this is not a problem. From Germany, this is a disappointingly by-the-numbers entry. Better luck next time, Deutschland, this won’t win.

Song #12, Armenia, ‘Lonely Planet’ by Dorians. Generic stadium rock, and yes, they’re using the wind machine. The keyboard player looks a bit like John Goodman. The guitarists are scowling. The song is Not Very Good. Still, the singer has a good, raucous rock voice, and they’re certainly giving it their all. Oh, look – those jets of flame again, accompanying the obligatory post-bridge key change. I have no idea what they’re singing about.

Well, at least that was mercifully short. Back to Petra, who’s still wearing the Pink Shard. She’s got better English than a lot of British presenters. Break for a short “comedy” film featuring Linda Woodruff, a Janet Street-Porter soundalike played disturbingly convincingly by a Swedish actress called Sarah Dawn Finer. She’s better than her script. Long, laboured joke about Abba being the Swedish Royal Family. Oh dear.

And we’re off again, this time to the Netherlands, who haven’t even been in the grand final for a while (no, I did not watch the heats myself – what do you think I am, a masochist?). Song #13, ‘Birds’, by Anouk. We are warned that if you don’t like Lana Del Rey, you’ll loathe Anouk. Noted. I like the idea of Lana Del Rey better than I like Lana Del Rey… and better than I like this. Minor-key music-to-slit-your-wrists-by in 3/4 time, delivered with what’s supposed to be a knowingly gloomy smile. I lasted almost two minutes, I hope you appreciate it.

Song #14. Romania. Again with the strobelights warning. Mr. Norton tells us it’s going to be special. I have a cushion ready. ‘It’s My Life’ by Cezar. Black sequinned Wicked Witch coatdress, overwrought music, dancers writhing under red satin, a falsetto chorus drawn from the very lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno, and the dancers seem to be wearing only flesh-coloured loincloths. This is, indeed, special. Cezar looks like a male Dynasty-era Joan Collins who has prepared for an audition for a vampire movie by modelling his vocal stylings on a drunk Kiri Te Kanawa and his facial expressions on a bilious attack. This is, indeed, special.

And it’s us. Song #15, the UK, Bonnie Tyler. Love Bonnie Tyler. Love, love, LOVE Bonnie Tyler. She is fabulous, and ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ is a genuine pop classic. This song – ‘Believe In Me’ – unfortunately is not. She’s as charismatic a performer as we’ve seen so far, she’s selling the song with everything she’s got, but the song is sludge and she won’t win. Shame, because she’s obviously having a good time, and if anyone deserves another moment in the spotlight, she does.

Home entry. Song #16, Sweden, ‘You’ by Robin Stjernberg. He’s sort of Gary Barlow-ish, until it gets unhinged. OTT chorus, five dancers on a red flying saucer doing choreography that seems to be the result of a collaboration between Twyla Tharp and the Muppet Swedish Chef, and a barrage of fireworks as we enter the final chorus. If you were trying to stage an aneurysm, this is possibly what it would look like.

Hungary. Song #17. ‘Kedvesem’, apparently in the Zoohacker Remix, like that means anything to any of us viewers at home, performed by ByeAlex, and yes, that is supposed to be all one word. He looks strangely like French Nouvelle Star (= American Idol) winner Christophe Willem, his song is slightly folksy hipster-ish pop, and it’s refreshingly low-key and rather charming. He’s toast.

Song #18. Denmark. The favourite to win, apparently. ‘Only Teardrops’ by Emmelie de Forest. She’s very pretty, it’s a perfectly attractive Europop song with a slightly military drumbeat underneath and a penny whistle solo in the intro. Pleasant, cute, but not terribly memorable. She can sing, though, and she’s having a lovely time singing her lovely song, which is nice. Huge cheer at the end, but I’m not sure what for, although it’s got a catchy chorus.

Iceland. Song #19. Montage film includes, yes, lots of snow and ice, and heavy sweaters. ‘Eg a Lif’, by Eythor Ingi. Sung in Icelandic. His look is lounge-singer-goes-RAWK, the song is a pleasant, rather old-fashioned pop-rock ballad that’s positioned somewhere between Abba and Meatloaf, and he’s got a terrific voice. I quite like it, but it isn’t going to win.

Azerbaijan. Song #20. ‘Hold Me’, by Farid Mammadov. Oh dear God, this has STAGING. He’s grinning like an evil doctor on an American daytime soap, perched on top of a six-foot perspex box that has a dancer in it mirroring his moves – yes, upside down. For the second verse, Farid jumps off the top of the box and they do an old-fashioned side-by-side mirror act. Then a woman enters in a red dress whose train probably stretches the entire length of Azerbaijan, and the perspex box fills with petals, and everyone grimaces meaningfully until it ends, two choruses later. The song is the sort of overwrought rock ballad people slow-dance to in every disco in every Mediterranean resort, which means it won’t make your ears bleed and you won’t remember a note of it two minutes after it ends. This could do well, although the staging is possibly too batshit insane for it to win.

And now, Greece. Song #21, ‘Alcohol Is Free’, Koza Nosta featuring Agathon Iakovidis. Greece, clearly, didn’t even try this year, and have just kidnapped a cheesy folk band from a backstreet bar in Piraeus, then force-fed them amphetamines to make them play at double speed. I lasted a little over a minute.

Ukraine. Song #22, ‘Gravity’, sung by Zlata Ognevich. She enters carried by a man who is apparently 7’8″ tall, and proceeds to sing a song that starts as a drippy ballad, and turns into a full-on festival of WTF – thumping beat, showy high notes, but it just sort of meanders in search of a point. Still, she’s gorgeous, and she’s got a hell of a voice. It’s wasted on this, though.

Song #23. Italy. ‘L’Essenziale’, Marco Mengioni. He’s probably very nice, the lapels on his suit are very shiny, his song is really boring, and he just stands there. This could really use some half-naked dancers and projected lightning forks. Or a pulse, even, because I’m not sure Mr. Mengioni’s got one. Has the doctor from Malta left the building already? Please, someone check. I’m not sure everyone is going to make it to the end of this song alive.

Another warning about strobe effects and flashing lights. If there weren’t strobe effects and flashing lights, we’d want a refund. Song #24, Norway, ‘I Feed You My Love’, sung by Margaret Berger. It’s a battle sequence from Star Wars with a techno beat underneath, coyly sung by Hayden Panetierre’s twin sister, who is wearing a dress so tight that it had to be put on in hospital under a general anaesthetic. She really goes for it, but it’s not quite demented enough to be a Eurovision classic, and it’s probably too bombastic to win.

Nearly the end of the songs now. Song #25, Georgia, ‘Waterfall’, by Nodi Tatishvili and Sophie Gelovani, whose song is a huge power-ballad duet about how their LUUUUURVE is LIIIKE a WATERFALL. There are fireworks, there’s dry ice, the wind machine is going full blast, and every time they hit a big-ass high note they look like they need to poo.

Ireland. Last song, #26. Not Jedward this time, but there will be flashing lights and strobe effects. Ryan Dolan, ‘Only Love Survives’. Camp Celtic drummers who’ve been sprayed with cooking oil, a big anthemic chorus, strained high notes – this is a slab of toxic Eurodisco that’s sung, apparently, by a computer-generated Danny Zuko wannabe. It’s awful – less awful than Jedward, obviously, but possibly awful enough to do well.

And that’s all the acts. I’ll spare you the pre-voting recap because I’m fast-forwarding past it myself, obviously – I mean, really, if I couldn’t even make it through some of those songs once, I’m not going to stick around for the recap.

Petra’s back to announce the interval act – last year’s winner, Loreen, singing a medley of her biggest hit and wearing a black-and-white feathered thingy on her shoulders that could potentially poke out the eyes of several of her dancers if they get too close. ‘We Got The Power’, she’s singing. She looks quite angry. Possibly she didn’t choose that outfit, or possibly she’s just pissed off because she knows that if she moved a little to her left, the wiring in her shoulder-feather-thingy would pick up a much better TV show from Denmark.

Ooh. There are acrobats on wires, and the music just got worse. She’s taken off the feathers now, and replaced them with a black-and-white copy of Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The stage lifts her back into the air, the end of the coat stays on the ground, she finishes the song 15 feet above the audience to a wall of cheers. Not a tough crowd, this.

Another recap. Fast-forward time.

Petra has now changed into the colours of the Swedish flag, and before we start in on the points we’ve got film of Bonnie Tyler’s lovely week in Sweden. What this mostly reinforces is that yes, she’s great,  but why couldn’t we find her a better song?

Interval act #2 – Petra, leading us in a song-and-dance celebration of Swedish kitsch, complete with dancers toting elk antlers, nods to the Muppet Chef, ‘The Seventh Seal’, vikings, IKEA,  and ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’, and thirty seconds of choreography about recycling. It’s even got a chorus-line of high-kicking footballers and a woman writhing in a martini glass full of milk.  It’s utterly cheesy, and possibly more completely fabulous than nearly anything else we’ve seen this evening.  And Petra, amazingly, knows how to sock a big production number across the footlights.

Voting now. I’ll be skipping a lot of this, because who cares? Oh, wait. No, we’ve got Sarah Dawn Finer as herself, giving us her self-consciously arty cover of ‘The Winner Takes It All’. Ms. Finer clearly does not feel compelled to stay too close to the song’s actual melody. No wonder Agnetha stayed home.

So, yes, the voting. This hasn’t been a banner year – even the camp kitschfests were fairly subdued, there was nothing as demented as last year’s Russian Grandmas, and we can all predict which countries will vote along which nationalistic lines well in advance. And getting through this part of the broadcast takes about forty minutes, and I can’t be arsed. We all just want to know who won, and who got nul points. Denmark have an early lead, Estonia are bottom, Bonnie Tyler is also near the bottom of the board.

Now Ireland are bottom, nobody has nul points – shame – and we’re still languishing in the bottom half of the bottom half of the board.

…and with four countries still to vote, Denmark have won. We are still in the lower half of the board, so the battle now is a race for the bottom. Rather like the whole competition, if you’re cynical. And who isn’t when they’re watching this?

Oh. That catwalk over the audience is supposed to represent the Oresund Bridge.

Ireland’s bottom. Surprising, even given the blatantly nationalistic voting – he was far from the worst. So next year we’ll be in Denmark, and now we get another blast of Emmelie de Forest, with an extra glittergasm on the last chorus.

Overall: B-, apart from the Swedish Smorgasbord number, which was a knockout. Let’s hope Denmark can bring back the kitsch next year.

This year’s winner:

Can’t spell? Go and work for Waterstones!

Here, for your reading pleasure, is a selection of the staff recommendation cards on display on bookshelves in Waterstones in the Manchester Arndale shopping centre:

Psycodelic?!

Oops, we lost an N.

They had a pile of spare hyphens in the stockroom, and they had to use them somewhere…

…and that letter E just refuses to behave itself.

See? There’s an evil extra letter E lurking in the store that’s clearly determined to insert itself into as many cards as possible.

Finally, here’s the apostrophe that the company removed from their corporate name at the beginning of this year. Obviously, it refuses to go away.

I was with a friend; we were in there for about fifteen minutes, we certainly didn’t go into the shop intending to poke fun at their signs, and without really looking we found about ten cards containing horrible spelling mistakes. Since we only browsed through a fairly small section of the store, it’s almost certainly fair to assume that there are more. Presumably the branch’s management approves these materials; if head office aren’t embarrassed, they should be. This is sub-GCSE English, and to allow this kind of weapons-grade illiteracy to be part of a merchandising display at all, never mind in a bookshop, is inexcusable.

It’s also, to be fair, not at all what I expect from Waterstones. In other branches, the standard of English on display on these cards is usually impeccable. This, however, is sloppy, lazy, and thoroughly unprofessional.

Get Baku! Get Baku! Get Baku to where you once belonged!

Yes, people, it’s here again! It’s the event we’ve all been waiting for! It’s the year’s most glittering televisual extravaganza! It’s a breathtaking transnational celebration of human rights abuses the very best in popular music! It’s an occasion so exciting that by the end of it I may very well have run out of exclamation marks! It’s! It’s! It’s…

…oh, right, the ibuprofen and the antihistamines just kicked in. It’s the Eurovision Song Contest. Again. And I’m not live-blogging it because jamming red-hot pokers into my eyes and ears would make a mess of the carpet. I recorded it earlier, and while I have managed to remain spoiler-free I reserve the right to make judicious use of the fast-forward button because, really, how much trauma can one person reasonably be expected to take in a single evening?

Also, I don’t drink, so I can’t numb the pain by doing a shot every time something ridiculous happens. Yes, folks, just for you, I am watching this sober. I hope you’re impressed.

And no, before you ask, I did not watch the semi-finals. What do you think I am? A masochist?

ANYway. So. We’re in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. And yes, I can find it on a map (Caspian Sea, left-hand side, about a third of the way up). Azerbaijan has vast, vast quantities of petrodollars. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan doesn’t exactly have an unblemished record when it comes to basic human rights, but never mind. They won Eurovision last year, so here we are. We open with a panning shot across Baku’s skyline, a prominent feature of which is a trio of skyscrapers that are designed to look like gas flames, just in case anyone was in any danger of forgetting where Azerbaijan’s money comes from.  Don’t mention the torture, or the intimidation of journalists, or the… no, really, don’t. There’s bound to be lots of glitter, so who cares about basic concepts of freedom as enshrined in all manner of international conventions and treaties?

There’s a four-hour time difference between Azerbaijan and the UK, so the show began at midnight local time. Given that Eurovision usually involves a level of kitsch that could not be brought forth without someone on the production team calling on the dark arts, this seems oddly appropriate. We start with fireworks, then ten seconds of a traditional singer, and then… oh my. It’s a troupe of male dancers in floaty white rainwear, some of which glows under a black light. And two of them fly over the audience.

Clearly, this year’s telecast is going to be even less restrained than usual.

Now there are traditional dancers. They’re elegant. They’re graceful. They’re obviously doomed. This section of the opening is tasteful, and yet it’s been allowed to go on for more than twenty seconds. That’s disappointing. And we haven’t even met the presenters yet! Well, apart from Graham Norton, snarking in the background.

Things kick off in earnest with a repeat performance of last year’s winning song, ‘Running Scared’. There are two people on a trapeze over the singers’ heads. Fortunately, we only get one verse before the number ends with big jets of flame shooting out of the sides of the stage. The subtext we’re meant to take away from this, presumably, is that any act unlucky enough to score Nul Points will  be barbecued.

And now, finally – Finally! – it’s time to meet our hosts. Leyla and Nargiz. Nargiz, apparently, is a lawyer. She should sue whoever measured her for her dress, which seems to be squeezing one of her boobs out like toothpaste from a tube. And they’re joined by the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabulous Eldar Gasimov, last year’s winner. He’s a bit like Nick Jonas, only bland.

Ooh. Change in the rules. Phone voting doesn’t open until every act has performed. You’d think this would be the sensible way to do things, but no, it’s a first.

Aaand we’re off. And Britain’s first, represented by a face off Mount Rushmore Engelbert Humperdinck. The outside of the hall is lit up with Union Jacks. The song is in 3/4 time, and magnificently cheesy, and Mr. Humperdinck – who really does sing ‘luurve’ – looks a bit like a chipmunk in a black single-breasted suit. There’s a pair of black-clad ballroom dancers behind him, and Mantovani wants his string section back. The song’s not bad, but Mr. Humperdinck’s big money notes at the end, I’m afraid, are a bit approximate. He’s 76, maybe he should have dropped the key a tone. It’s not embarrassing – which puts it several steps above our last few entries – but it’s also, I think, not a winner, and performing first won’t help his chances.

Now we’re off to Hungary. And yes, the outside of the hall lights up in the colours of Hungary’s national flag. Compact Disco (geddit?) with ‘Sound of our Hearts’. Power ballad, sounds like an odd cross between early Boyzone without the harmonies and late Ultravox, sung by a less charismatic Marti Pellow clone who’s wearing an oddly rigid black leather coat. Competent but uninspiring, nicely sung, could have come from any country in Europe at nearly any point in the last twenty-five years. Move on, there’s nothing to see here.

Albania. She’s a ‘devoted experimental jazz singer’, apparently. Mr. Norton tells us that she can ‘do extraordinary things with her voice. Not pleasant things, but extraordinary’. And she seems to be wearing a cruller on her head. Rona Nishliu, she’s called, bringing us ‘Suus’. The tinkly piano intro isn’t bad. Her singing, however, certainly is, although it pales next to her astonishing gown, which seems to be modelled on a British Airways club class seat circa 1993. She seems to be simultaneously channeling Bjork, Enya, and Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, with some startling high notes thrown in, presumably to bring every dog in Azerbaijan to heel.

Now. Lithuania. Donny Montell. ‘Love is Blind’. We’re in Mathis territory. He’s wearing a sequinned blindfold. I’m kind of hoping he’ll lose his footing and go crashing over the front of the stage, because the song he’s singing is stunningly boring. Oh – no, wait, a beat has come in, he’s ripped off the blindfold, and now he’s started dancing. He’s about 22, and he dances like… well, imagine Zac Efron impersonating Miss Piggy while receiving electroshock therapy.

Five. Bosnia-Herzegovina. Maya Sar, singing ‘Korake Ti Znam’. Big shoulder-pads, grand piano, pretty voice, meaningfully tortured facial expressions. As the song gets more and more overwrought, she gets up from the piano and a wind machine kicks in. At Eurovision, this is what passes for restraint.

Six. Russia. The grandmas. Buranovskiye Babushki, bringing us ‘Party for Everybody’. Oh dear Lord, there’s a prop oven onstage and they’re wearing traditional dress. Yes, it’s a novelty act. They look like they’re having a nice time, and the oven is spinning behind them. Perhaps it’s Satanic. As the number approaches what – please, God – I hope is the climax, they pass a tray of pastries around. It’s simultaneously completely horrendous and absolutely irresistible. This, I’m afraid, is the kind of moment that makes us watch Eurovision.

Iceland. Greta Salome and Jonsi, with a song called ‘Never Forget’. According to Mr. Norton, their song is possibly more suitable for a musical than for Eurovision. Jonsi might be a vampire – he seems to have fangs – and Greta is toting a violin and grinning like she’s under hypnosis. The song reminds me a little of ‘Which Witch’, the Norwegian Operamusical, which I actually saw, and which I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to forget. It’s bland, bombastic, and not bad enough to be memorable. Unlike ‘Which Witch’.

Ooh. Cyprus. I’m going there later this year. Ivi Adamou, with ‘La La Love’. Standard-issue Mediterranean-resort Eurodisco, for some reason performed on and around a pile of books. It’ll go down a storm in the beach bars, but it won’t win this evening.

France. Anggun, singing ‘Echo (You And I)’, performing with the French Gymnastics Olympic team, whose shirts seem to still be in the suitcase they forgot to pick up at the airport. Anggun is wearing a bronze breastplate with matching net curtains (by Jean-Paul Gaultier, apparently), and she’s wasted on this song, which is another slab of white-bread Europop.

Italy. Nina Zilli, ‘L’Amore e Femmina (Out of Love)’. Nice bluesy beginning. She’s sort of like a clean Amy Winehouse. She can sing, the song isn’t bad, and she and her backing singers are clearly having fun with it. In fact, I think she might be having Albania and Iceland’s fun as well. This is about as classy as Eurovision gets, and I hope she does well. Which means she’s obviously doomed.

Estonia. Ott Lepland, with ‘Kuula’. You know what’s nice, Mr. Lepland? Singing with your eyes open. It’s terribly, terribly sincere and meaningful, and he does, at least, hit his high note dead on… oh, wait. No. He hit his first high note dead on, but not the second, third or fourth. Never mind. I feel less bad about fast-forwarding through the rest of his very, very boring song now.

(Who am I kidding? I don’t feel bad about fast-forwarding through the rest of his boring song at all. I recorded it specifically so I could fast-forward through the boring songs.)

OK. Norway. Tooji, with ‘Stay’. Norway have won a couple of times in recent-ish memory, but they also gave us Jahn Teigen, who scored nul points in 1978. This could go either way. Ooh. Acrobats. A guy in a hoodie with big rings on his fingers. Synths and a drum machine. He’s so… clean. It’s like watching Justin Bieber trying to cover the Beastie Boys. I lasted twenty seconds, I hope you’re grateful.

A momentary pause. Nargiz – whose boob is still trying to break free of the side of her dress – is interviewing Mr. Humperdinck. He had a great time and sang from the heart, apparently. That’s nice.

Now it’s the home team. Sabina Babayeva, ‘When the Music Dies’. This is Eurovision, so that title is probably redundant – music died here in rehearsals, long before we tuned in. She’s wearing a pair of dead swans as reimagined by Dynasty-era Joan Collins, and her song sounds like every power ballad you’ve ever heard. She can sing, but she doesn’t quite have the power to slam it home in suitable melodramatic style. Fortunately, there are lighting effects that can do that for her.

Oh. I just found out precisely when the music died: at the beginning of her big high note at the end of the song. Ouch. Well, to be exact, it didn’t die so much as commit hari-kiri. You can actually see the note’s entrails flailing across the front of the stage. Someone get a mop before the next act comes out. There could be a nasty accident.

Romania. Mandinga – apparently, a Romanian-Cuban combo – with ‘Zaleilah’. The singer is gorgeously curvy, the song is a giant slab of Latin-tinged Euro-cheese, and her backing band look like a gaggle of flamboyantly gay Energizer Bunnies who have somehow stumbled into the Pet Shop Boys’ video for ‘Go West’. One of them is carrying a set of toy bagpipes. Another has a bright red accordion. It’s… amazing. More like this, please.

Denmark. Soluna Samay, ‘Should’ve Known Better’. Yes, than to dress like Captain Sensible. The song is competently-executed guitar-driven indie-ish pop. Fast-forward time. That’s not what we’re here for.

Greece. Eleftheria Eleftheriou, with ‘Aphrodisiac’. There are bouzoukis – or a bouzouki synth setting, at least – along with hyperactive dancing and a catchy aa-aa-aa oh-oh-oh chorus. It’s bonkers, but possibly not bonkers enough.

Ah. Sweden. A favourite, apparently. Loreen – not Soreen, Loreen – with ‘Euphoria’. She’s like a cross between Kate Bush and Kate Ryan. No, really, she’s obviously seen Kate Bush’s dance moves from ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’. The song is another slab of by-the-numbers Eurodisco, and the performance ends with her getting felt up by a dancer. It’s not completely horrible, but if this is the favourite to win, it’s a bad year.

And now Eldard’s back, introducing Turkey. Turkey’s entries are often very, very special, so I have high hopes. Can Bonomo, ‘Love Me Back’. The choreography resembles an international breakdancing class taking place in an iron foundry, flying sparks and all. The dancers have bare sleeves and grey cloth bat-wings attached at their wrists. No, I don’t know why either. It’s camper than Butlins, and the homoerotic subtext would be off the charts if the performance wasn’t so completely sexless. It’s like watching six Ken dolls do the expurgated version of a Turkish-themed disco medley. You can’t get this anywhere else on television.

Spain. Pastora Soler, ‘Quédate Conmigo’. It’s power ballad time again. It starts very soft, and builds to the pitch of a declaration of war. They’re getting a lot of use out of the wind machine this evening, or maybe her top notes caused an earthquake. She did, at least, hit very nearly all of them, which is more than can be said for several of this evening’s contestants. I think I liked the quiet bit of her song better. It was very short.

Germany. Song co-written by Jamie Cullen. Roman Lob, ‘Standing Still’. Pleasant, boring pop song. No staging tricks, just the singer, drums, piano, bass and guitar (and, um, the orchestra in the background). Where’s the cheese? There’s nothing distinctive about it at all – good or bad – which means it almost certainly won’t win.

Home stretch now. Malta. Kurt Kalleja, ‘This Is The Night’. More Eurodisco, but it’s fun – this is a very entertaining slice of disposable pop music with a catchy chorus, performed without any kind of pretentious concept by people who can actually sing, and who look like they’re having a good time on stage but don’t grin like they’ve hoovered up every illegal substance within a half-mile of the stadium through their noses.

Macedonia. Kaliopi, ‘Crno i Belo’. Another quiet, emotional beginning with a tinkly piano in the background – that and cheesy Eurodisco are this year’s two recurring musical themes. She can sing – really well – but the song goes to hell when the guitars and drums come in. What started as a pretty piano ballad very quickly descends into something that Bonnie Tyler would have rejected for being too unsubtle. Shame.

Aaaaand they’re back. Yes, it’s Jedward, the Irish entertainment industry’s joined-at-the-hip punchline, assaulting the senses with a ditty called ‘Waterline’. They entered last year as well. This year, they’ve ditched the vertical hairdos, and seem to be dressed as gold toy soldiers off a Christmas tree. The song is written-by-rote Anglo dance pop, they can’t really sing, the choreography is ridiculous, and – just like last year – they do it with magnificent conviction, even though I think I just saw the word ‘tacky’ get redefined. And yes, that’s a real fountain in the middle of the stage. They get soaked at the end, which given their costumes brings new meaning to the term ‘golden shower’. Unfortunately, the water doesn’t short out their radio mikes.

Serbia. Zeljko Joksimovic, ‘Nije Ljubav Stvar’. Everybody looks terribly serious, and he’s not the first singer this evening to start singing with his eyes closed. This is, however, the first performance tonight to feature a man in a skirt playing the clarinet. As for Mr. Joksimovic, I’m sure his mother thinks he’s wonderful, but it’s fast-forward time.

Second-to-last song now: Ukraine, Gaitana, ‘Be My Guest’. She’s dressed entirely in white tassels (OK, apart from the flowers in her hair), men in day-glo dresses break-dance behind her (sometimes they have trumpets), the video projections are a bad acid trip gone wrong, and the song is the evening’s worst contribution to the Eurodisco canon. It’s completely, magnificently deranged. Possibly more deranged than the Russian grandmas.

Last country. Waaaaah!  Moldova, Pasha Parfeny, bringing us a gem called ‘Lautar’. There’s some kind of accent on that first A but I can’t be arsed to go and find the right ASCII character. He’s dressed as the woodcutter in a fairytale – yes, including a leather toolbelt – and his backing singers appear to be five big-breasted extras from ‘The Flintstones’. The song is very… Moldovan. He’s selling the song as if his life depends on it. It possibly does. The choreography is insane – at one point he does strong-arm poses while the backing singers writhe on the floor. It’s the most ridiculously kitsch performance of the evening so far, including the grandmas.

So that’s it. The presenters are back to explain the voting rules. Nargiz’s boob apparently finally escaped from the clutches of the white ballgown somewhere in the later part of the show, so she’s had to confine the girls in something a little more restrictive. Her current dress – flesh-coloured, the better to disguise any escaping boobage that might occur later -  is basically underwiring with a skirt attached. Eldar looks like he’s auditioning for the role of Billy Flynn in a non-Equity road company of ‘Chicago’.  The voting is now open, so we get a recap of all the songs, so it’s now time for me to fast-forward. A lot. Unfortunately, I’ve just had another snatch of Ms. Albania’s public primal scream therapy. Don’t ever say I’m not prepared to suffer in the name of writing.

The presenters are plugging the CD and DVD of this year’s songs, because of course this is music you’ll want to take home and treasure forever.

And now we have another quick reminder of all the songs. Whoopee. More Albanian shrieking.

And the voting lines have closed. This year, you only got fifteen minutes to make your futile gesture.

Interval act. Lots of lasers, a parade of torches (no pitchforks, which is perhaps lucky for Ms. Albania), traditional Azerbaijani instruments. In an astonishing coincidence, Mr. Norton informs us, the pop star who will sing the lead vocal in this interval act just happens to be married to the Azerbaijani President’s daughter. Gosh. How… coincidental. This is the sort of Big Production Number they used to do on the Oscars, only twice as big. In case you might be wondering why I put myself through this crap every year: this. This bit. There’s nothing else like it on television. Dancers, drums, exploding fireballs, singers entering suspended on a wire from the flies, a light show that makes Las Vegas look like something you’d get at Wal-Mart to put on a Christmas tree. It’s amazing. It would be more amazing this year if it wasn’t being fronted by Mr. related-to-the-President-by-marriage Azerbaijani pop star, who is – how can I say this nicely? – a bit crap. Golly, I wonder how he got this gig?

And now Nargiz is terrorising people in the green room. She’s nice to the Azerbaijani singer, who seems to be chewing gum. She doesn’t really speak to anyone else much, although she does say hi to Norway. No nationalism here, then. Oh no, not at all.

I’m going to fast-forward through a lot of the scoring, because really, who wants to sit through an hour of this? Sweden takes an early lead. The voting, as usual, at least partly plays out along weirdly nationalistic lines. Jedward got a point before Mr. Humperdinck did. Given the nature of this contest, that’s not a surprise. Belgium threw him a bone, though – he doesn’t have nul points.

Nargiz has changed dresses again – black, with everything between her neck and her knees chained rigidly into place. Probably a good idea. A spillage could have proved fatal. Not to her, obviously – I think she’s remote-controlled – but perhaps to a cameraman or a member of the audience. We’re still in the bottom three, with one point; Macedonia gave Albania twelve points. That’s utterly terrifying. Denmark, after 25 countries have voted, still have nul points. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to win. Then Iceland vote, and the tables turn slightly. The UK is now bottom, nobody has nul points.

The woman announcing the Swedish vote is amazing. She has an Estuary accent and big glasses, and looks a bit like the middle-aged love-child of Kate Copstick and Giant Haystacks.

Gosh. Now we have six points. We’re still bottom. Oh, no we’re not, we’ve got another two points from Latvia. But there’s ten more countries to vote, so there’s still plenty of time for us to hit bottom again.

Nail-biting, isn’t it?

The Finnish vote, announced by Lordi (if you don’t know already, go to Google). He’s dressed as some kind of demon from the final season of ‘Angel’. And he keeps doing things with his tongue. Why is there never a giant anvil when you need one?

And the winner is… Loreen. Not the best song in this year’s contest, and not the best performance either (come to that, it’s nowhere near as good as either of the last two winners); the UK came second-to-last. Loreen, to her credit, has apparently spoken in the press about Azerbaijan’s human rights record, which – as Mr. Norton points out – is a topic that most other contestants have avoided. So Loreen gets to do her song again, and next year’s show will come from Sweden. Lucky Sweden, they get to pay for most of it.

Overall: not a vintage year. Too much bland sludge, not enough catastrophic kitsch. No dresses that sprout butterfly wings halfway through a song, no perspex pianos, no bondage gear, and a seemingly endless succession of Eurodisco songs that all sounded pretty much the same. Disappointing, although the jaw-dropping opening number and interval act slightly redressed the balance.

Still, at least we didn’t come last ( which we did two years ago). I’ll be tuning in next year, because even in a bad year there’s nothing else quite like this on television; in the meantime, here’s Loreen. No, I don’t know why she won either.

Monkee poop

Twenty-three songs, twenty-five scenes, twenty actors, seven musicians, two acts, spies (Russian, American and British), three singing nuns… and maybe half a joke. Yes, folks, I sat through Monkee Business: The Musical, a jukebox musical based on the music of The Monkees which is now lumbering through the third week of a tryout run at the Manchester Opera House. In time, I hope, the memories will fade, the scars will begin to heal, and I’ll stop having nightmares. The show is being presented in Manchester under an initiative called Manchester Gets it First, which was created by the Ambassador Theatre Group in an attempt to position Manchester as the UK’s preeminent tryout city for large commercial theatrical productions.  Presumably something violently unpleasant happened to one of ATG’s executives somewhere in Manchester; on the evidence of this show and the dismal Ghost, which premiered here last year, the setting up of this programme in Manchester can only be construed as an act of bitter revenge.

It’s not, actually, that I think a jukebox musical based (mostly) on the back catalogue of The Monkees is an inherently stupid idea – it’s just that this jukebox musical based (mostly) on the back catalogue of The Monkees is built around an inherently stupid idea. We’re in 1968, at the height of The Monkees’ fame; a concert promoter hires four lookalikes to tour Russia, Japan, Italy, Spain, France and England as The Monkees because the band themselves are too busy to make the trip, and wacky hijinks ensue, involving spies, singing nuns (yes, they sing Dominique) and… oh, who cares? It’s not as if any of it makes sense while you’re watching it either.

It wouldn’t matter at all that the plot doesn’t make sense, of course, if any of it actually made you laugh. At all. The Monkees’ original TV series was entirely built around this kind of outlandishly farcical plot-line, and it was consistently fresh and funny. Monkee Business: The Musical is neither. It’s staler than a two-month-old Danish, and about as funny as a migraine. The show’s book was perpetrated by Peter Benedict, who should know better; I refuse to say he ‘wrote’ it because the mess of a musical that’s currently stillborn on the Opera House’s stage strongly suggests that, rather than write the show, Mr. Benedict simply spat it into a napkin after eating bad shellfish. It’s not just that the jokes don’t land – there are no jokes. There are running un-gags about how improbable future inventions like Starbucks, mobile phones and Twitter seem from the perspective of 1968, and even less funny un-gags in which characters onstage periodically break the fourth wall to comment on the artificiality of theatrical performance (“…and by the miracle of theatrical design, we’re there already!”), contained in scenes which seem to start and stop rather than begin and end and which don’t ever add up to anything you could call a coherent plot, punctuated by miscued songs. Structurally, the show isn’t just a mess. It’s an apocalypse with concert lighting, cheap sets, and a band.

You can’t really blame the actors, who do their best with the horrendous material. The four actors playing the fake Monkees – Ben Evans (Davy Jones), Stephen Kirwan (Mickey Dolenz), Tom Parsons (Mike Nesmith, giving the best performance in the show) and Oliver Savile (Peter Tork) – do their best to sell the awful script, and sometimes nearly succeed, and in their musical numbers, they’re legitimately terrific. When they’re singing, they do manage to capture the original band’s infectious sense of fun, and it’s mostly their performances of the songs that kept me from running screaming from the theatre in search of brain bleach when the interval rolled around.

The supporting cast don’t fare as well, mostly because they don’t get to sing as much. Tony Timberlake struggles manfully with a series of not-very-funny comic cameo roles, and has fun duetting with Kirwan’s Mickey Dolenz on ‘Randy Scouse Git’ in the first act. Michelle Bishop, lumbered with playing a Russian spy named Nikita Smirnoff (I know, and that’s about as funny as the show gets), does a good job of slinking around in leather and singing the Beatles’ ‘Back in the USSR’ (why?), and it isn’t her fault that there are more laughs in the last ten minutes of Medea than she manages to raise in this. She clearly has excellent comic timing, but she’s given nothing to use it on. Scarlette Douglas plays a traffic warden, and sings ‘My Boy Lollipop’. I hope she knows why, because I don’t. Cassandra Compton, similarly, does a really good job with her big number, ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ (the Monkees were not big on solo songs for women), but despite her best efforts she can’t manage to sell a role that stubbornly refuses to make any kind of sense.  And that’s true, more or less, of the rest of the cast. When they sing, even given that the musical staging is usually uninspiring, the show starts to come to life – but then the song ends, and it dies again, and the cast can’t resuscitate it because there was no life in the script to begin with. Even the usually-reliable Linal Haft is defeated by the role of the promoter. I know he can be funny, I’ve seen him do it before, but all he’s given here is a series of shyster stereotypes and the weakest catchphrase ever written (“You wouldn’t like it!”), and it isn’t enough.

(Fact about Mr. Haft – his wife, also an actor, has the best name in showbiz, bar none: Buster Skeggs. She’s really good, too – once upon a time, she was a hysterically funny Amy in Company at the Oldham Coliseum, and she was also an excellent Carlotta in Follies at the Leicester Haymarket.)

None of the actors are helped by the show’s director, David Taylor, whose work is… rudimentary, meaning that it almost rises to the level of Peter Benedict’s book. This kind of show needs pace and energy, and he gives it neither; it just sort of sits there, which means that there’s no comic momentum whatsoever, which leaves you, unfortunately, with ample time to contemplate the many, many shortcomings in the writing (and the person seated about ten rows in front of me who was texting all the way through Act Two). Again, I know he’s done good work before, even in comedy, because I’ve seen it; presumably, for some reason, he chose not to here. Morgan Large’s costumes – straight out of Austin Powers, a far funnier take on the same milieu – are sometimes witty, and his set, which consists mostly of cutout buildings that look like something from a pop-art pop-up book, demonstrates that at least someone involved in the show had something resembling an idea. What he didn’t get is much of a budget; the set looks cheap, although the costumes don’t. The lighting (by James Whiteside) is appropriately lurid. The band, led by Richard Beadle, are excellent, and so is Clem Rawlins’ sound design – it’s a rock musical, so it’s loud, but you can actually hear all of the lyrics, even in the ensemble numbers, and that doesn’t happen as often as you’d think.

And the Monkees’ songs, in fact, do stand up to the jukebox musical treatment, even when they’re surrounded by a show that’s mostly really, really terrible. There are strong, surprisingly durable, thoroughly entertaining pop classics that still sound fresh and fun forty-odd years after they were first released. It’s easy to see the attraction in building a jukebox musical around them, and it’s a great shame that this production’s creative personnel have so thoroughly botched the show they’ve created (I mean, really – at times, I found myself longing for the wit and subtlety of Ben Elton’s book for We Will Rock You, which is possibly the most appallingly crass long-running hit musical London has ever seen). This is the first tryout run, of course, so there’s theoretically time for work to be done, but the odds of this succeeding are not good: the theatre was less than a quarter full, and the show’s third booking (in Sunderland) has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales (the Glasgow performances next week are going ahead, although a glance at the King’s Theatre website suggests that ticket sales there are also pretty dire). Clearly it needs a major overhaul if it’s ever going to reach the West End (or the end of next week); firing Mr. Taylor and Mr. Benedict would be a good place to start, because what this show smacks of, more than anything else, is cynical people who should know better turning in fifth-rate work on a show they intend to palm off on a provincial audience that they condescendingly assume will buy whatever dreck they choose to sell as long as it comes packaged with familiar songs, attractive performers and a flashy light show. The actors and band deserve better, and should run Mr. Taylor and Mr. Benedict out of the theatre, possibly with pitchforks and burning torches, for stranding them in this mess.

But hey, at least Manchester Gets It First. Glasgow, you have been warned.

More Separated at Birth…

Warning: you may need a discomfort bag.

Fit the first:

Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you. And now I have to gouge my eyes out.

Fit the second:

One way or another, she’s gonna find ya, she’s gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha…

Separated at birth II

 

 

I think we should be told.

 

Can you make a steamroller out of cheese?

Yes, it’s that time of year again. May. Spring is in the air… somewhere, it was bloody freezing here today. Flowers are in bloom. It’s light past 9pm. And, with crushing inevitability, the Eurovision Song Contest is rolling around again. Whoopee. I could ignore it, of course – and my ears and retinas would thank me for doing so – but where’s the fun in that? It’s got more cheese than Tesco Extra, and about the same level of musical sophistication.

I am afraid, however, that I lack the testicular fortitude to liveblog the event. Doing so would mean sitting through it all, which would probably lead to my doing something tedious, painful and messy, like gnawing off my own left arm and using it to club myself unconscious. I recorded it, and I reserve the right to make use of the fast-forward button. Particularly since I’m watching it sober. I also, I should say, lacked the testicular fortitude to watch any of the semi-finals. I mean, come on. There’s only so much anyone can be expected to take.

OK. So. We’re in Dusseldorf. Lovely. Our plastic hosts for the evening are Anke Engelke, Stefan Raab and Judith Rakers, with Graham Norton providing snarky voice-overs. Anke seems to be wearing a bright red feather duster. Judith seems to be wearing some kind of recycled foil takeout container. Stefan is wearing a black suit and tie, I assume in preparation for music’s funeral. Judith’s smile isn’t a real smile, it’s a cardboard cutout that’s been stapled to her chin. Two seconds in, and I’m already longing for the subtle presenting skills of, say, Davina McCall. Anke seems to be suffering from some kind of pain in the lower jaw – she’s wincing slightly (and you would, wouldn’t you?), and wrinkling her nose.

Oh dear God, the presenters are singing live. Anke is singing last year’s winning song. No, wait, Anke started it off, and now Stefan’s unleashing his inner rock god. I’m not sure children should be watching this. He sings! He plays guitar! He drums! He grimaces! And he’s joined by Lena, last year’s winner, who seems to be on a quest to discover her inner Ute Lemper. And it ends with lots of fireworks. When you start with the explosion, where do you go next?

Don’t dwell on that one too much. Anyway, it could always be worse. Imagine Terry Wogan doing ‘Making Your Mind Up’. The Cheryl Baker part.

Ooh. Speeded-up film of the process of converting a football stadium into the Eurovision arena. Apparently Take That will be performing there later in the year. That’s one to miss, then.

Earnest chat from the presenters. Anke’s French is pretty good. Stefan likes Judith’s Bacofoil. More fireworks. As usual, the phonelines open before anyone other than the presenters and last year’s winner has sung a note.

OK, we’re on to the candidates. Finland first. Paradise Oskar, he’s called. There’s film of someone who is not Paradise Oskar carrying a double-bass off a U-Bahn train in Berlin. Mr. Oskar is very, very young. Playing acoustic guitar, piano in the background, save our planet theme – ironic, given the amount of hairspray he’s wearing. I mean, seriously, that do could kill if you threw it at someone. I’m sure he’s very nice, and I’m sure his mother is very proud of him, but it’s a really dull song. He also seems to have Patti LuPone’s way with consonants. He ends with a big grin, to a roar of applause. I want kitsch and I want it now.

Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dino Merlin, Love in Rewind. A geography teacher and Amanda Lamb’s twin sister, a tambourine, a mandolin, a triangle, oom-pah rhythms, permagrins and lots of plaid. The last singing group I saw that was this perky was the New Main Street Singers in “A Mighty Wind”, and that was satire. They end by waving in unison.

Denmark. A Friend in London – no, really, that’s the name of the group – singing ‘New Tomorrow’. They’re apparently very popular in Canada. They look and sound a bit like the CBeebies version of The Killers. It looks as if spiky hair is one of this year’s recurring visual themes.

Lithuania. So of course we see film of a Lithuanian ski instructor. Mr. Norton tells us that the song comes straight out of musical theatre. Uh-oh, I love musical theatre. Evalina Sasenko, ‘C’est Ma Vie’. There’s a grand piano and dry ice, and many overemphatic gestures accompanied by a swooping string section. She signs the second verse for the deaf, and then the drums come in. She makes Shirley Bassey look like a model of subtlety and restraint. Nice voice, though, and the song wouldn’t be too bad if you trimmed away most of the schlocky arrangement.

Hungary. Retro-pop, apparently. Introduced via film of a Hungarian chef in a German market. Kati Wolf, ‘What About My Dreams?’ Blue lamé dress, routine Eurodisco song. She’s a bit like a lobotomised Lady Gaga. Fast forward time.

Ireland. Jedward. Yes, that’s right. Jedward. The song is called ‘Lipstick’. The hair is terrifying, the singing is worse, and the red sequinned military jackets with foot-high fake shoulders look like something left over from a low-budget sci-fi spoof. Their song is truly hideous, but a real earworm. And, bless them, they do it, ridiculous choreography and all, with absolute conviction, ending in a shower of red glitter. It’s simultaneously completely awful and thoroughly compelling. This is what Eurovision is about.

Sweden. Eric Saade. ‘Popular’. Thankfully not the witless “comic” “song” from ‘Wicked’. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a black T-shirt with straps across the front, unfortunately – given the nature of the song, my choice for him would have been a straitjacket and a gag. Bad boyband choreography with his backing singers. He seems to be trying for some kind of bad-boy vibe… but this is Eurovision, he’s about as threatening as mayonnaise.

Ah. Estonia. She’s studying fashion. We see film of an Estonian stockbroker. Of course. Getter Jaani, ‘Rockefeller Street’. She looks a bit like Lea Michele, and she’s wearing something fuchsia pink out of a five-year-old’s dressup box while dancers hide behind scale-model cartoon buildings behind her. There’s a fine line between kitsch and crap, and this crosses it. Fast-forward time.

Greece (is the word, is the word…). Loucas Yiorkas featuring Stereo Mike, ‘Watch My Dance’. White middle-class guy attempting to do hardass street rap, followed by a singer who looks like the Primark David Beckham belting out a banal melody over industrial percussion sounds. Watch my hand stretch out for the remote.

Russia. Apparently he’s a movie star. His name translates as Alex Sparrow. Alexej Vorobjov, ‘Get You’, co-written by one of Lady Gaga’s producers (according to Mr. Norton). Wobbly voice. Leather jacket, white vest, quiff. He looks like an understudy for Danny Zuko in the third national company of “Grease”. Again, bad boyband choreography with his backup dancers. Lacks the inspired inanity of Jedward’s effort. C- at best.

France. Unlike anything else in the competition, or so says Mr. Norton. He’s the youngest professional tenor in the world, apparently. Amaury Vassill, ‘Sognu’. Accompaniment nicked from inspired by Ravel, hair modelled on a dishmop, legitimate tenor voice, stiffly serious facial expression. It sounds a bit like something off a Russell Watson album. Projection of a stormy sky behind him, occasionally turning the colour of fire, with fireworks coming in towards the end of the song. Interestingly, it’s in Corsu, not French… and that is, in fact, the only interesting thing about the song. He’ll probably have a nice career doing crossover albums, but he won’t win Eurovision.

(Yes, the contest finished a while ago… but I have managed to remain spoiler-free.)

Ooh. Italy. For the first time in 14 years, Eurovision scholars. Raphael Guadalazzi, ‘Madness of Love’. Smug lounge singer from the cruise ship from hell. You know how earlier this week, Europe took a decisive step backwards towards reintroducing border controls in the Schengen zone? This song is the reason why, it’s nothing to do with immigration control. He attempts this sort of  raw wail at the end of each chorus. I think it’s modelled on the sound of a chicken being strangled. If only you could apply a taser via a TV screen.

And now Judith is interviewing the geography teacher from Bosnia. She’s wearing a new bacofoil dress, and is still grinning. Her mouth moves but, oddly, the grin doesn’t.

Oh. Denmark’s lead singer’s top is backless. I wish I hadn’t seen that.

Switzerland. Anna Rossinelli, ‘In Love For A While’. She’s wearing a slinky red dress, and she can open her mouth very, very wide. The song sounds oddly like ‘Wig in a Box’, only without the fun and the energy. She’s quite charming, and is better than her material, which is in nul points territory.

The UK. Us. Blue. ‘I Can’. Yes, they can. But I wish they wouldn’t. Anonymous, radio-friendly  manufactured pop, efficiently delivered and deadly dull.

Moldova. Sdob si Zdub, ‘So Lucky’. It’s like a cross between “Very”-era Pet Shop Boys, complete with pointy hats, and Chumbawumba, with a dose of Balkan folk and a unicycling fairy carrying a trumpet thrown in. Unabashedly bizarre, this is the kind of WTF TV we all tuned in for in the first place. You just don’t get this on the regular music channels.

Ooh. Germany. Lena, the defending champion. ‘Taken by a Stranger’. Slinky black pantsuit, backing singers in silver bodystockings, I think the tune is still in the dressing room. She’s a convincing pop star, but her song last year was far better. On this, she sounds like she’s trying to be Bjork, only without the accompanying psychosis. Oh dear. Fast forward time. Again.

Romania. Hotel FM. ‘Change’. I think the pianist is trying to kill the piano. It’s very 70s, and the singer obviously has his heart set on out-grinning Judith, our bacofoil-clad hostess. Two dancers holding trumpets do fake Fosse moves behind him. It’s rather sweet, slightly amateurish, and genuinely fun.

Austria. Nadine Beller, ‘The Secret is Love’. Judging by her hair – which is bizarrely rigid – the real secret involves quick-drying cement. It’s a sub-Whitney Houston power ballad, and she can certainly belt out the big high notes. It’s just really, really strange watching her move and her hair stay still.

Azerbaijan. Ell/Nikki, ‘Running Scared’. Big, confident slab of cheesy pop that would sound great blaring out of the speakers at a beach bar in a Mediterranean resort. Which is sort of the point of Eurovision. It’s not good, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s naff, syrupy, and irresistible, though you might hate yourself later.

Slovenia. Maja Keuc, ‘No One’. She’s wearing what looks like designer chainmail and thigh boots, and her song is… God, I can’t take a second more of it. Imagine the worst parts of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera put in a blender and programmed into a robot. You know what you’re imagining? It’s better than Maja Keuc.

Anke’s talking to France. She’s still not smiling, but she’s also not wearing a feather duster any more. There’s a plug for the souvenir DVD, like you’d want to watch this again.

Iceland. Sjonni’s Friends, ‘Coming Home’. They’re actual musicians, the song is old-fashioned European folk-pop, the sort of thing the male half of Abba were doing before Abba, and it’s rather charming. It hasn’t, of course, a hope in hell of winning.

Spain. Lucia Perez. ‘Que Me Quiten Lo Ballao’. Again, a resort bar classic. She’s very enthusiastic. I feel like I should be wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt to watch this. On any objective level it’s dreadful, but – once again – resistance is futile. And yes, there are more fireworks.

Ukraine. Mika Newton, ‘Angel’. She’s made up to look like she’s in a vampire movie, wearing feathers on her shoulders, and someone’s doing sand-painting behind her. Oh. The song is possibly terribly meaningful, or maybe she just ate bad clams for lunch.

Serbia. Nina, ‘Caroban’. Very 60s, down to the Mary Quant pastiche dresses. She can sing, it’s a good song, but she’s not going to win. She might have, if she’d sung in English.

Final song. Georgia. Eldrine, ‘One More Day’. She’s wearing a black suit carrier with neon green Spirograph doodles taped to it, and she’s trying to rock out. And now her male colleague – another black suit carrier, but he’s got neon yellow Spirograph doodles and either a lot of eyeshadow or a black eye – is rapping. They’re terrifying. It’s like watching Satanic rock, as performed by the cast of ‘Glee’, with costumes made at home by someone’s drunk grandma and the ghost of Leigh Bowery. I’m quite impressed that the producers saved the worst for last.

OK, songs over. There were more songs in the final last year; this year, several were eliminated in semi-finals which I couldn’t be frigged didn’t have time to watch. I suspect that most of the real horror shows didn’t make it all the way through to tonight, because this evening’s roster of songs, taken as a whole, has been rather blander than usual. Oh well. Anke’s back in another new strange frock, and she seems to have discovered her smile. Perhaps she’s just relieved that Georgia’s performance is finally over. She’ll certainly never have to listen to that again.

I spoke too soon. Bummer. Quick reminder of all 25 songs. Pass the remote.

Oh. No huge cheesy intermission act. Eurovision without a big cheesy intermission act is like the Oscars without the Debbie Allen Dance Number. Yes, I know the Oscars have been without the Debbie Allen Dance Number for several years now. They’re not the same and I still want it back. Here, we have a German pop star with a Kid Creole fixation murdering what I assume is one of his own compositions behind a line of go-go dancers. This, remember, is the country that made David Hasselhoff a pop star.

Crap. He’s getting a second number. It sounds almost exactly like the first one.

Is this a third song? No, it’s the second one, it still hasn’t finished. I fast-forwarded.

Aaaand we’re back. Stefan’s first words as a baby, apparently, were ‘douze points’. If only those were going to be his last words tonight as well. No such luck. Anke can’t walk up steps in her bizarre dress, so he carries her. Bless. But then he gets his guitar out again. Where’s the giant anvil? The back wall of the stage splits to reveal all 25 acts in their green rooms on a riser behind the stage, presumably so we can catch the disappointment on the faces of the act that ends up with nul points.

I am, however, going to fast-forward through the endless, endless part of the show where all the participating countries dole out the points because, really, life’s too short. We’ve all seen it before, we all know what to expect. Nationalism, strange scoring decisions that seem to have little to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of any individual act, and a series of increasingly hilarious hairstyles. Now Anke’s smiling, she looks oddly like Amanda Peet. Apparently, she’s the German voice of Marge Simpson.

I stopped my fast-forward through the scoring. Ukraine gave Georgia 12 points. Wow.

And stopped again, to see that this year, sadly, nobody is going to end up with Nul Points. Damn.

The Danish presenter seems to be wearing something pink and demure, and she looks almost sane. This won’t do at all, so it’s fast-forward time again. 25 countries competed tonight, but all 43 countries are voting. Slowly. Sorry, can’t sit through another hour of that.

So. Tonight’s winner is… Azerbaijan. By quite a long way. Italy 2nd, Sweden 3rd, UK 11th, Switzerland bottom, nobody got either nul points or a single-digit score. The Azerbaijanis look very happy; the rest of us are left reeling from the knowledge that the Italian nightmare lounge singer came second. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is this year’s winning song:

Overall, I have to say, this year’s contest has been disappointingly tasteful. No trick costumes that sprouted butterfly wings halfway through a song, no stage invasions, and a surprisingly small percentage of really hideously terrible songs.  Do better next time, Baku. I will be watching. Possibly from behind a cushion.

(Nearly) live from Oslo…

Yes, folks, it’s that time of the year again. The Eurovision Song Contest, that multi-nation celebration of spandex, mullets, outrageous lighting effects, blatant nationalism and really cheesy pop music. I’m intending to watch the whole thing – well, intending to meaning that I put it on Sky+ so that I can fast-forward through the crap bits once I reach my pain threshold, which usually happens about 20 minutes into the show. ANYway. What follows is a collection of random thoughts as they occur to me as I watch fast-forward through the broadcast.

1. Nadia and Haddy (the female presenters) seem relatively sane. Erik (token male, a Norwegian kids’ TV presenter) does not. His grin is bizarre. I think his mouth might be made out of silly putty.

2. Alexander Rybak (last year’s winner). He sings! He gurns! He plays the violin! People do backflips behind him! It’s going to be a long evening.

3. The phone lines are open. Before any competitor has sung a note. I think we can guess how the public voting is going to play out tonight, can’t we? Probably the same way the panel votes go – so blatant nationalism, with very little to do with the talents or otherwise of any competitor. Cool.

4. First entry. Azerbaijan. She’s dressed as a gas flame, and she’s singing a generic midtempo thingy about lurve. It isn’t too bad… except for some reason it’s called “Drip Drop”. Why?!?!

5. Spain. Daniel Diges.  Algo pequeñito.  A horrifically cheesy waltz sung by a man in a shiny suit with Simon Rattle hair, while grimacing imbeciles dressed as toys dance around him. There are high notes, despite the unfortunate fact that Diges can’t sing them. If there’s any justice, this will receive nul points. There’s also a stage invasion from a deeply odd man wearing a black T-shirt and what looks like a red condom on his head. He’s more interesting than anyone in the actual act.

6. Graham Norton is warning us that Norway’s entry is a big power ballad. Duly noted. And it is. Third song of the night, second shiny grey suit. The singer – one Didrik Solli-Tangen – is flat, singing just under the note all the way through. The song is so bland that this actually improves it. Unlike Daniel Diges, though, he does manage to hit his big high note at the end. Unfortunately that’s the only note he hits dead on in the entire three minutes.

7.  Moldova’s entry has a neon blue violin, and the group’s singer is dressed like a Primark Lady Gaga. The song’s a bit like “Just Dance”, only crap. It’s called “Run Away”. I’m following their advice, and pressing the fast-forward button.

8. Cyprus’s entry, from a certain angle, looks a bit like Kevin Bacon in “Footloose”. He looks Very Serious, but the backing singers are smiling like they’re on drugs. The song is even blander than the Norwegian one.

9. Bosnia and Herzegovina field a singer who clearly fancies himself as a sort of one-man metal answer to Coldplay. Fast-forward time again.

10. And we’re off to Belgium. Tom Dice, “Me and My Guitar”. And that’s all it is, at least for the first verse. He looks very nervous, but he sings quite nicely and it’s rather charming… so it isn’t going to win.

11. Serbia. Milan Stankovic. White jeans. Sequins on his mid-blue tails. Blond pudding-bowl haircut. Pink Docs. Backing dancers doing robotics. Speeded-up oom-pa-pa backing track. This is the point where my eyes and ears start to bleed.

12. Nadia – who is wearing earrings that, under the lights, look like droplets of solidified urine – tells us that Spain will perform again at the end because of the stage invasion. Graham Norton, in VO, reminds us that the invader was more interesting than the performance he interrupted.

13. And we’re off to Belarus. Black suits (men), silver/gold/bronze sequins (women). Terribly sincere hand gestures, nice singing, bland ballad that, oddly, has a military drumbeat underneath. As the song lurches into the climactic verse, the womens’ dresses suddenly sprout butterfly wings (the song’s called “Butterflies”) – a moment of kitsch that goes a little way towards redeeming a rather dull song.

14. Ireland. Naimh Kavanagh, bringing us what sounds like a cross between “The Rose” without the harmonies and “The Wind Beneath My Wings”. There’s a Celtic flute between the verses; I don’t think Ireland are allowed to put in an entry without one. Someone should have told Ms. Kavanagh before the show that purple is not her colour. The song crashes to a melodramatic climax, and she gets a standing ovation. It’s a big, bland ballad – it’s pure Eurovision-bait. It’ll either do very well or very badly.

15. Greece. Omigod. White jumpsuit and, I think, fake pearls. It’s a bit like watching a number from  a really bad production of “Zorba!”, set to a techno beat and choreographed by one of the Muppets.

16. And now it’s the UK. Stock, Waterman but no Aitken. The song’s called “That Sounds Good To Me”. Compared to the previous entry, yes it does. Actually, it sounds like every record SAW made in the 80s – written by a robot, irritatingly catchy, nicely sung by someone with an OK voice but not much personality. It’s a competent pop single, in other words. We’re toast.

17. Graham Norton is being interviewed by Haddy while Graham Norton provides commentary in VO on a separate channel. My brain hurts.

18. Georgia. Sofia Nizharadze singing “Shine”. Nice ballad, creepy staging – the poor woman has to keep singing while bare-chested dancers manhandle her, lift her up, paw at her and writhe at her feet. Then the electric guitars come in, and it gets really overwrought. She’s very pretty, though, and is probably the best singer so far.

19. Turkey. We’re being told to clap our hands.  They look like they really want to be Muse. I like Muse, but it’s fast-forward time.

20. Albania. Juliana Pasha, costumed in castoffs from “Blake’s 7″, with a disco number in 6/8 time called “It’s All About You”. Her backing singers have to be on drugs. So does the violinist. It’s actually not bad – unabashedly tacky, but fun, and she can sing – but those backing singers are either high or performing at gunpoint.

21. Iceland. Hera Bjork. No, not Bjork. Hera Bjork. She looks a bit like Sookie off “Gilmore Girls”. Big nightclub dancefloor anthem, she’s got a good voice, but the actual performance is very static – the lights move more than her backing singer/dancers. Odd.

22. Ukraine. “Sweet People”. Oh. My. God. Jewel soundalike wearing a flesh-coloured slip, red bondage chains and a black Grim Reaper hood, singing in an increasingly overwrought manner about… something, while someone aims a wind machine at her. I’m sure it’s all terribly meaningful. Every red light in Scandinavia is going off behind her. It is, at least, relatively short.

23. France. Described, accurately, by Graham Norton as ‘cheesy europop’. I assume Jessy Matador is not his real name. The kind of song that one suspects might work better played at a campsite disco somewhere near the Mediterranean.

24. Romania have a perspex tandem piano. Yes, two keyboards. The song is quite scary. Imagine David Gest and Catwoman singing a musical collaboration between Peter Allen and Bananarama, with operatic high notes thrown into the middle eight. Yikes.

25. Russian entry. Maudlin, sincere, sounds like a throwback to 70s folk rock, and none the worse for that. It’s a resolutely un-showbusiness performance, though the singing-to-the-photograph bit should have been cut in rehearsals. We know it’s a maudlin ballad, thank you. It sounds a bit like the sort of thing you’d expect to hear someone singing as they crawl out of a bar half an hour after closing time, after drinking an unfeasible amount of vodka.

26. The Icelandic team’s table has a volcano centrepiece. Heh.

27. The Armenian entry. She’s gorgeous. People appear to be acting out prehistoric tableaux behind her. I can’t tell why because the lyrics make no sense. What the hell, it’s Eurovision.

28. Germany. Lena. “Satellite”, it’s called. The bookies’ favourite, apparently. Catchy, fun performance of an upbeat song with a nice swing to it. She’s possibly trying a little bit too hard to be quirky, and in some ways it’s a very un-Eurovision performance – by which I mean that nothing about it is notably bizarre and it doesn’t make you want to poke your eyes out with a toilet brush – but this is pretty good.

29. Portugal. We’re in full-on Céline territory here. She’s very pretty, but the song is sludge.

30. Israel. I’m sure he’s very pretty too, but this song, also, is sludge.

31. Denmark’s entry seems to have been created and performed by someone who is fixated on Synchronicity-era Police and ABBA – the song sounds like someone put “Every Breath You Take” in a blender with side one of “Super Trouper”. If the thought of that scares you… it should.

32. And Spain gets to perform again because of the stage invasion, the perpetrator of which is apparently now in custody.

…and it’s voting time. Erik is showing us how to vote by phone. He  has very odd eyebrows, and he’s just ripped off his tux to reveal a lime green sequined fitted shirt. There’s only another 15 minutes left in which to vote. Damn.

The thing is, the contest is sort of a joke, but it’s also a platform. It’s more or less irrelevant to the British music industry (which might be why our entries are routinely so dreadful), but it’s a means for singers/groups from countries that don’t have the same kind of entertainment infrastructure to get to perform in front of a huge worldwide audience. It doesn’t happen very often, but huge careers have been launched via Eurovision – most notably ABBA, though I’m not sure that there was anything at that level among the entrants this evening. And it does, at least, usually yield a compellingly overblown TV show – a kind of variety show of the damned, with bad hair, sequins and strobe lighting, followed by voting conducted along blatantly nationalistic lines (you’re not allowed to vote for your own country, so you vote for your neighbours/allies – and if you’re in Eastern Europe, you cast all your votes behind the former Iron Curtain).

But before the voting starts, it’s time for a flash-mob style interval act, in which a lot of people planted in the audience get up and dance, with video links to flash mob audience dancing in other countries. It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t quite come off, because the location shots from various cities across Europe are actually more fun than the scenes in the Telenor Arena itself.

…and we’re back. Now Erik has sprouted butterfly wings, and it’s time for the results. Whoopee. Nadia’s removed the pee earrings. I miss Katie Boyle. It’s time to fast-forward through the country-by-country announcement of the results, because life’s just too short.

And, ooh, the results are fun. As usual. Germany wins – deservedly, they had the best song, a good performer, and managed a performance that didn’t look completely ridiculous. Lena, the very young singer (she’s 19) looks genuinely shocked; Alexander Rybak shows up again to hand over the gong. He leaps into the air for no apparent reason. Poor Lena’s trying to give an acceptance speech in English, and doing quite well, but she’s not enthusiastic about singing again. Norwegian Erik’s grin is now truly disturbing. I think he’s about to eat Oslo.

The UK, of course, came last, though unfortunately we didn’t get nul points. Bummer. Somehow, at Eurovision, total ignominy is better than simple failure. Still, there’s always next year. Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, here’s this year’s winner:

It’s a… oh dear. Never mind.

The mascots have been unveiled, and it appears that the 2012 Olympics will be screened exclusively on CBeebies.

Meet Wenlock (on the left) and Mandeville (duh). Should you be wondering exactly what they’re supposed to be, well, so are the rest of us. I thought they might be a pair of stale Peeps that had been left a little too long in the microwave, but the press release says that they’re supposed to be beings made from droplets of molten steel that was used in the construction of the  new stadium. Presumably, later there’ll be bad cartoons explaining how they came into existence.  Oh joy. To my eyes, they look like the love children of a Moomintroll and a cyclops, with taxi signs bizarrely stuck on top of their heads (no, really, that’s what they’re supposed to be) and a disturbing  joint fetish for asexual day-glo jumpsuits. Either that, or someone sprayed bleach at Tinky Winky and Laa-Laa, then stretched them on a rack. The single eyes, apparently, are supposed to represent cameras. Riiiight. Wenlock, bless him/her/it, has the Olympic logo stencilled in orange across the chestal area. At least in this context it’s unlikely to induce seizures – just, perhaps, retinal bleeding.

And that photo’s scary. Either they’re vogueing, or they’re getting ready to karate-kick the photographer into next week. It’s going to be a long two years.