…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, and it’s getting more and more special by the second. 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. ‘Special’ doesn’t begin to cover it.

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 dull, rather old-fashioned pop-rock ballad that’s positioned somewhere between Abba and Meatloaf, and he’s got a terrific voice. It’s not unpleasant, 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:

And the winner is… nobody

A pair of mediocre American actors warbling showtunes. A wincingly unfunny script. Weird camerawork. Bizarre editing. Inexplicable guest performances. Terrible sound. The complete absence, apparently, of anything resembling a point.

No, I haven’t started watching ‘Glee’ again, and season two of ‘Smash’ doesn’t go out here for a while yet. This was ITV’s seemingly ironically-billed broadcast of the ‘highlights’ from this year’s Olivier Awards ceremony. For lovers of really, really, really awful television, it was a feast to savour. For anyone else, particularly anyone who actually likes theatre, it was a waste of time dressed in a parade of dinner suits and posh frocks. How bad was it? Well, put it this way: last night I watched Showgirls, which I’d never seen before, and found that it was executed with a level of wit and style that this year’s Oliviers broadcast could not hope to match.

It was, in fact, quite difficult to work out what the makers of this programme – allegedly directed by one Stuart McDonald, who seems to have been responsible for, among other things, twenty-six episodes of Strictly Come Dancing – were trying to achieve, given that they seemed determined to shove most of the actual awards as far into the background as possible. In a slot of only ninety minutes on a major network – even at 10pm on a Sunday – I don’t particularly have a problem with showing at least some of the technical/supporting awards via a photo, a caption and a voice-over. Yes, set and lighting and costume designers do brilliant work, often under tremendous pressure, and yes, they deserve to be recognised, but if you have to squish the show down to half its actual length to fit it into a TV programme, something has to give, and the tech awards are not what’s going to keep people watching. Unfortunately, the supporting acting awards were relegated to 10-second clips as well, along with the awards for directing and choreography. Given some of what we were shown, that’s a little harder to defend. At least – credit where it’s due – the major award recipients were not limited to 30 seconds for their acceptance speeches; nobody abused the privilege, and the speeches we saw were generally funny, modest and charming. And as an added bonus: I didn’t notice anybody thanking God, which is an awards-show trope that generally sends my eyebrows shooting up into the stratosphere.

Otherwise, though, the show mostly seemed to either miss the point or shoot itself in the foot. No, that’s not quite fair: sometimes it  managed to do both at the same time. Surely the whole point of putting the Oliviers on television in the first place is to put a celebration of/commercial for the best our theatre has to offer in front of as wide an audience as possible? IF that was the aim – and it should have been – then the show was largely a miserable failure. We saw nothing at all of any of the nominated new plays, even though at least some of them are still running, and nothing at all (on the broadcast, at least) of some of the nominated musicals. We saw nothing at all of any of the winning performances, beyond a photograph of the actor in costume. All of the nominated shows, without exception, will have shot some kind of promo footage (quite a lot of it seems to end up on youtube), but we didn’t see any of it. The broadcast included musical numbers/medleys from ‘Top Hat’ and the current revival of ‘A Chorus Line’ (the latter’s number – ‘One’ – cut to under two minutes), and they both looked pretty good, once you learned to look past the bizarre camerawork and came to terms with the terrible sound. For ‘The Bodyguard’, Heather Headley gave a very, very self-indulgent (and, towards the end, surprisingly pitchy) rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You’, in which she managed to stretch the song’s first two lines out for what seemed like half an hour. We were also – oh joy – treated to a reprise of Will Young’s un-performance in ‘Cabaret’, for which he was inexplicably (yes, even in a very lean year) nominated for best actor in a musical. For those of us who had already paid to sit through it, that was just cruel.  Other nominated musicals (both new and revivals) didn’t get a look-in. Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton – two of the biggest names we’ve got – actually won their categories, and didn’t get to perform, presumably because their show closed months ago. There are clips of their (stunning) performances that would have been available, but they weren’t used here.

And, actually, that might have been OK if they’d genuinely been excluded because of time constraints, but they weren’t. Of course co-presenter Sheridan Smith had to have an opening number – she’s warm, funny, absolutely charming, has charisma to burn, and is a genuine, old-fashioned musical comedy star, even though she’s perhaps not the absolute greatest singer or dancer out there. Whatever it is, she’s got tons of it (and she’s also done plenty of TV, which means the people at home know who she is, which isn’t always the case these days with actors with a musical background), and seeing her vamp her way through ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ was fun, even if the song wasn’t improved by the terrible sub-Sunday Night at the London Palladium arrangement or the equally terrible miking. Given the special award for Gillian Lynne, the closing medley from ‘Cats’ was also entirely appropriate, and again, it was very well performed, even if it wasn’t well filmed or miked. Elsewhere in the show, however, there was a lot of filler. The clumsy jumps back and forth to the ‘public’ stage outside in the Covent Garden piazza didn’t work at all, and the material for the presenters went on for too long, and was so badly written that even Smith and Hugh Bonneville couldn’t sell it. These two actors are capable of being very, very funny indeed; they died up there, it wasn’t their fault, and they should probably put a contract out on whoever wrote their links.

Better – worse? – still were the guest performances. Petula Clark looks great, never mind considering she’s 80, but wheeling her out to sing ‘With One Look’ was a mistake – while she looks great, her voice is gone, and she struggled with the song to the point where it was almost embarrassing to watch. And then we had Idina Menzel and Matthew Morrison, both imported from across the Atlantic for no particular reason to deliver lengthy musical solos. Menzel paid tribute to Marvin Hamlisch by wailing and screeching her way through ‘That’s How I Say Goodbye’  as if she was at a karaoke night on a slightly downmarket cruise ship – because, apparently, no British actor has sung a Marvin Hamlisch song onstage, ever.  And Matthew Morrison gave us a blandly-sung, badly-choreographed solo medley from ‘West Side Story’ that climaxed in a gloopy cheesy-listening arrangement of ‘Maria’ with a power-ballad drum-beat underneath. Well, I say ‘climaxed’ – there might have been more, but that’s when I hit the fast forward button.

It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with having random actors sing showtunes on TV. I like showtunes on TV, and have the DVD collection to prove it. Aside from the fact that so much of this broadcast was just plain bad to begin with, though, I do have a problem with half of the most prominent solo performance slots in a broadcast that should be celebrating and promoting the best of British theatre being given over to American performers who have not done any theatre in this country this year, and whose television show is not even available in every household here, at the expense of performers who were actually nominated and shows that are currently running. Come to that, if the point was to plug the theatre industry on national television, then perhaps the casts of ‘Once’ and ‘The Book of Mormon’  and maybe ‘Merrily We Roll Along’, among others, should have been included in the broadcast, rather than a couple of  actors who’ve been on ‘Glee’, even though those productions opened after the cut-off for nominations. As it stands, as a promotional exercise, this was a wasted opportunity.

The thing is, unbelievable as this may seem, it’s about a decade since the Oliviers – this country’s highest-profile theatre award – have been on television at all, other than via webcasts or the red button. The Tony Awards, on the other hand, are telecast every year – on a major network, yet, and far earlier in the evening than this was – and while they parcel up the tech awards in an hour-long pre-show that airs on PBS, they generally do a reasonable job of celebrating each Broadway season and promoting the nominated shows, and the telecasts, while not perfect, tend to be executed with orders of magnitude more conviction than was on display here. They also – and this is important too – manage to stay on the air in a primetime slot (albeit on Sunday night) despite ratings that are usually lukewarm. It’s a positive step to have the Oliviers back on a mainstream network this year, but if it’s going to be worth keeping them there, ITV are going to have to up their game.

Bluntly, this programme was incompetent. It didn’t work as a celebration of the last year of theatre in the West End, and that might not have mattered if it had, instead, worked as a piece of television, but it failed there as well. It was a badly-conceived, badly-made, badly-scripted parade of pointlessness that, taken as a whole, resembled nothing so much as the arse-end of an under-rehearsed Royal Variety Performance in a really bad year. Given that we produce, in this country, a range of theatre that rivals anything you’ll find anywhere in the English-speaking world, I’m afraid, that just isn’t good enough.

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.

Su måste finnas. Finish. Whatever.

Have you heard this week’s most exciting, most internationally-significant piece of news?

I’ll give you a clue. It’s nothing to do with Libya.

Yes, that’s right. West Lothian’s favourite diva, Susan Boyle, has gone on a bad TV show and premiered a new song. That rocked your world, didn’t it? It certainly rocked mine, I saw the performance on youtube. And then considered turning to drugs to help me forget.

It’s not a new song, of course. It’s the English-language version of a song called   “Du Måste Finnas” (You Must Exist), and it’s from  “Kristina från Duvemåla”, a Swedish musical written by the male half of ABBA that premiered in Malmö in 1995. It’s already been recorded in Swedish and English by Helen Sjöholm, the musical’s star, and in English by Alice Ripley, who rips it to shreds (to be fair, she seems to do that to everything these days). As big, declamatory pop-opera anthems go, it’s rather good – provided the singer is up to it. The notes are not particularly difficult, but it’s one of those songs that needs a singer who can really sock the final refrain over the footlights.

Ms. Boyle, bless her, is not up to the task.

Actually, she’s worse than that. It’s an embarrassing, amateurish performance, particularly given that it’s a couple of years now since Ms. Boyle’s astonishing rise to fame on “Britain’s Got Talent”. You’d think that in that time people might have worked with her to help her develop a little more polish, but apparently not. Her phrasing is sloppy, she doesn’t keep to the beat, her voice just sort of peters out at the song’s climax, and she shows absolutely no connection at all with the song’s lyrics. The closest we’re given to anything resembling an interpretation are the parts where she flaps her arms around as if she’s trying to hail a taxi. The song, in context, shows a devout woman who has just miscarried railing at God for making her endure an unending stream of misfortune. Boyle sings it as if she’s trying to return a sweater without the receipt.

And that’s a shame, because her discovery via reality TV was an arresting, heart-warming news story, and her voice is quite well suited for the sort of middle-of-the-road Elaine Paige/Marti Webb strata of easy listening her recordings inhabit. The voice itself is… pleasant, and has potential, but she doesn’t have the sort of training you’d need to be able to belt with the power Paige had in her heyday, or that Sjöholm unleashes when she pelts into the final refrain.  Go to any decent amateur operatic society/community theatre, and you’ll find at least one singer with a stronger voice and more polish.

It’s dangerous. TV is seductive, and Boyle’s story made compelling television – but television has created a trap for her. She’s not without talent, but what sold, originally, was the gawky, never-been-kissed woman with Van der Graaf generator hair and a frumpy skirt confounding expectations by giving a passably pleasant performance rather than the flaming, humiliating train wreck everybody expected when she walked onstage. Two years on, though, she’s still peddling the same gawky, unpolished schtick, except she’s doing it in a better frock and with a nicer hairdo. And I don’t think it’s doing her any favours.

The thing about that first surprising performance is that it didn’t just show us a sweet, nervous lady with a nice voice. There was something quite interesting going on as Boyle sang, although she showed, as she did this week, limited skill as an interpreter of lyrics. You got the sense, watching her, that here was a woman who was quite literally singing for her life, singing her heart out, and it was oddly moving. More than that, she faced an audience and a judging panel (two of whom are almost certainly in thrall to the forces of doom) who smelled blood when she walked onstage, and she brought them to their feet through sheer force of personality. That’s not an easy thing to do; the fact that Ms. Boyle did it suggests that, with proper training, she could become a far better, far more polished performer than she is at the moment, in the process building for herself a far more durable and credible career than I suspect she’ll have if she continues on the track she’s on right now. She has huge hits, her albums sell in massive quantities, but she’s a sideshow, and there’s a limit to how far you can peddle a sideshow before the audience gets bored.

Although they’re not bored at the moment, and that in itself is depressing as hell. Boyle’s deeply mediocre performance of “You Have To Be There” was met with cheers and a large ovation from the studio audience at “America’s Got Talent” – and this wasn’t an audition, and there was no element of surprise. Ms. Boyle gave a bad performance, and the audience ate it up because she’d been wheeled out as the star attraction. You applaud the star, so the audience applauded, and never mind that the star’s actual performance had all the star wattage of three-day-old coleslaw. That’s the reality Reality TV gives us: what used to take years of training and hard work now takes three minutes on ITV and a few million youtube hits. Who cares if the final product – don’t say it out loud – isn’t any good?

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.

Civilisation

The price of bread has shot up recently. Have you heard? It’s all the fault of the Jews.

You just did a double-take, didn’t you? So did I. That was the thrust of a conversation I overheard a couple of days ago. The conversation was not taking place at, say, a rally in Nuremberg in 1936. The two participants were a married couple in a Co-op supermarket in suburban Greater Manchester, and they were not whispering. In the interest of accuracy – and only in the interest of accuracy, since it demonstrates how absolutely repellent and stupid these people must be – the gentleman’s exact choice of phrase was “fucking Jews”. In public, loudly, in a busy supermarket on a Sunday afternoon, within earshot of, well, anybody else who was shopping there, which included a number of families with children.

In the same week, we’ve seen a surprisingly minor furore erupt in the press about the Unholy Trinity – Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond – and their witless, racist evaluation of a  Mexican sports car.  The BBC’s apology managed to be both grudging and startlingly insincere, citing a long-standing British tradition of humour based on national stereotyping – because, really, what could be funnier, edgier or more worth defending than three white, overpaid, conservative motoring journalists poking fun at people with a different skin colour who are poorer than they are? Only comedian Steve Coogan, writing in the Observer, has, as of this writing, responded to the incident with the venom it deserves, pointing out at some length and in some detail precisely why the moronic racial stereotypes paraded onscreen by Clarkson, May and Hammond are not remotely funny.

Coogan’s piece is startling in the way it thoroughly, systematically demolishes the three presenters – he doesn’t just cut them off at the knees by pointing out the absolute childish vacuousness of passing off offensive racial stereotypes as ironic humour on an internationally-syndicated television programme, he kicks them when they’re down by pointing out how much the onscreen dynamic between them resembles two wimps (May and Hammond) hiding behind a school bully (Clarkson). It’s a devastating hatchet job, but it misses a trick: Top Gear is shown on the BBC, and is therefore funded by the licence fee.

Yes, that’s right. We’re paying for these idiots and their crass, schoolboy attempts at “humour”, to the tune of £145.50 per household per year.

The thing is, the racist comments on Top Gear and the racist comments in the supermarket are twin symptoms of a common disease. Casual racism, in this country, is widespread, fed by hysterical headlines about immigration, Muslims, asylum seekers and all the rest of it in the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and the like (sorry, I won’t link to them – I’m not wearing latex gloves and I don’t have a paper bag handy). It’s sobering to note that during our last general election, when Gordon Brown referred, in private but with a lapel microphone still live, to a woman he’d met on the campaign trail who had confronted him with a borderline-racist question about Eastern European migrants as “bigoted”, our national media – more or less all of it, including the broadsheets – crucified him and deified her, despite the fact that, given her line of questioning, “bigoted” was a fairly accurate description.  It was also sobering, during the last general election campaign, to note the absolute reluctance of any politician from any party to get up and say, unequivocally, that immigrants who are here legally, work hard and pay their taxes – in other words, the vast majority of them – make a positive contribution to our nation and our society, which of course sends an absolutely poisonous message to immigrants who are here legally, work hard, pay their taxes and all the rest of it. Immigration has become a toxic subject – all the more so, unfortunately, when the immigrants under discussion have any skin colour that’s further up the colour chart than light pink. And that’s without getting into things like BNP campaign leaflets, which are offensive on a level that actually makes me feel physically ill. During the recent by-election campaign here, one dropped through my letterbox bearing the charming headline ‘YOUR DAUGHTERS ARE NOT HALAL MEAT’. These people got something over 2,000 votes.

And, of course, when this stuff is splashed all over the front pages of “newspapers” like the Mail and the Express, which enjoy very wide circulation (largely because they pander shamelessly to the most bigoted fears and prejudices of their base demographic), when our politicians routinely characterise immigrants (and by ‘immigrants’ they mostly seem to mean people with darker skin than theirs) as scroungers, and when racial stereotypes are apparently considered fair game as a source of humour by the presenters of one of our more popular television programmes, it’s not at all surprising when you hear someone spout the sort of foul, offensive racist crap I heard at the supermarket on Sunday, and do so quite matter-of-factly and in a public place. I’m not saying, of course, that Top Gear caused the moron I met in the supermarket to spout racist bullshit in public – actually, thinking about it, ‘moron’ is too kind, he had the sort of intellect that makes an amoeba look like Stephen Hawking – but the casual acceptance, espousal and even endorsement of racist attitudes as a source of headlines (the gutter press) or humour (Top Gear) at least gives the impression that it’s somehow once again acceptable to say outrageously racist things in public. And, certainly, in this part of the country, in a town in which seething tensions between different ethnic groups lie very, very close to the surface, you don’t have to look very far to find the kind of attitude I encountered on Sunday. The letters page in the local newspaper is usually a good place to start.

Well, sorry, we’re all to blame. One of our national characteristics, true, is that we are, as a group, somewhat reticent. We’re often reluctant to stick our heads above the parapet – with good reason, since confronting the kind of brain-dead thug who would seriously attribute the rise in the cost of a loaf of sliced wholemeal to any specific ethnic or religious group is likely to result in, at the very least, a stream of obscenities and insults – so we say nothing, ignore it, and hope it goes away. It isn’t going to go away because by saying nothing, by not standing up and saying loudly and clearly that such attitudes are vile, hateful, offensive and thoroughly unacceptable, we’re effectively giving permission for public hate speech.

I told the oaf in the Co-op to shut up. I’m apparently a fucking cunt who’s going to get his fucking head kicked in. The Co-op staff, of course, just stood there and gawped, as did my fellow citizens, most of whom had looked shocked and appalled as they heard this semi-evolved chimpanzee spout the kind of putrid filth that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Third Reich campaign meeting. I suppose this ape could have hit me, although from his point of view, in a busy supermarket where there were both witnesses and security cameras, that could have ended up being some kind of own goal – and in any case, he probably didn’t have quite enough coordination to breathe and scratch himself at the same time, so the likelihood of his a) finding his fist and b) getting it to connect at any kind of velocity with any part of my person was probably relatively remote. Nevertheless, I imagine it might have been more prudent to keep myself to myself. I heard one person – shamefully, a member of the supermarket’s staff – say loudly that I was making too much of a fuss.

Sorry, no. The profoundly sad thing about what happened when I went shopping on Sunday is precisely that versions of that experience, in today’s Britain, are not at all unusual. They’re not at all unusual because most of the time we don’t make enough of a fuss. We’re de-evolving rapidly into something quite unpleasant – a society in which casual racism is not shocking, common courtesy no longer exists, and the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ have apparently replaced the comma and the semi-colon. Those of us, myself included, who stand on the sidelines tut-tutting at the offensive behaviour we see in the streets every day are complicit, because we allow it to happen. Unless we learn to stand up and say no, we are effectively giving permission, but by standing up and saying no, we put ourselves in the firing-line.

That’s not a world I want to accept. It’s 2011. We’re supposed to be civilised. We’re supposed to be better than this. We pretend that we’re better than this.

We aren’t.

“It works best if you pretend like you’re getting tasered…”

Oh, “Glee”, why don’t I love you?

I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. It’s not the high school setting – I loved both “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Veronica Mars” – and it’s certainly not the fact that it’s a musical. Sometimes, it grabs my attention, I get caught up in it, and I start to fall in love with it, but somehow “Glee” never holds my attention beyond the next commercial break, and it’s a little hard to put my finger on the reasons why.

The show, certainly, has flashes of genius. Mercedes singing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” – a song I really, really don’t like – at the pep rally was genuinely moving, even if you could see that particular musical selection coming half-a-dozen scenes in advance. The big chorus numbers are often exciting, even if the musical arrangements tend to pummel whatever song is being performed into middle-of-the-road sludge with a power-pop backing track.  Brittany – who finds recipes confusing, thinks dolphins are gay sharks, and doesn’t know how to turn on a computer – is a brilliant creation (and has been getting more and more to do), and Heather Morris’s performance is both flawless and hysterically funny. The relationship between the flamboyantly gay Kurt and his straight-as-they-come father is sensitively and touchingly handled, and Kevin McHale and the writers do a generally good job of portraying the paraplegic Artie Abrams.  Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester is a powerhouse villain; Lynch has grabbed hold of the show’s showiest role with both hands, and is clearly having a wonderful time spitting out her character’s ever more evil/deranged one-liners. And the guest stars are usually cleverly cast, and often get the best of the writing.

And yet, and yet… I still haven’t fallen in love with the show, and every week there’s something in it that has me hitting the fast-forward button. This week, it was the excruciatingly self-indulgent vocals in Idina Menzel and Lea Michele’s duet of “I Dreamed a Dream” – it started well enough, but then very quickly took a swan-dive into the land that taste forgot, becoming so unpleasant that I had to hit the button and Make It Stop. The writing for the principal characters is often not as clever as it thinks it is, and some of the central casting is problematic. Lea Michele acts her character perfectly, but pulls ridiculous faces when she sings; part of the problem with “I Dreamed a Dream” tonight was that when she hit a big note she looked like she was trying to poo out a microwave (to be fair, Ms. Menzel, here, must share the blame, since she was equally dreadful). Matthew Morrison’s Mr. Schuster comes alive whenever he sings, which is fortunate because when he’s not singing it’s as if some scientist has found a way to deliver a dose of Mogadon via the technological miracle of television. Cory Monteith doesn’t even come alive when he’s singing, though his adenoidal vocals and ditchwater-dull acting will certainly make you want to contemplate his mortality. The show’s music team have clearly spent a little bit too long watching American Idol and X-Factor, and are rather too ready to apply those production techniques to music that would be better suited to a more restrained approach (and we’re back to tonight’s desecration of “I Dreamed a Dream”).  And so on. For everything I genuinely enjoy about the show, there’s another thing that makes me wince and reach for the remote.

And that’s too bad, because I really wanted to love it, and I just can’t. Some of it’s great and a lot of it’s good – but some of it’s flat, and some of it is flat-out bad. I’m still watching, but – to quote a much, much better musical – a lot of the time, I’m sorry-grateful.

Sublebrity Sits Vac

Graham Norton on a flying bicycle! Sheila Hancock saying ‘tits’ in prime-time, then announcing “I don’t care, they can’t sack me!” Charlotte Church perfecting her Margaret Thatcher death glare! Yes, folks, it can only be the final of “Over the Rainbow”. There will now be a short hiatus while the Munchkins are put to work replenishing the global supply of sequins, lip-gloss, gingham and cheese. The rest of us, once we’ve taken two Solpadeine Plus to recover from the headache induced by the set and lighting designers, will continue to wonder why the licence fee has, once again, been spent on an extended infomercial for a commercial theatrical production. Don’t think about that one too much, the answer will depress you.

Where was I? Oh yes. Oz. That’s Oz, not Oz or Oz. Or rather, some TV studio with a hideous set featuring a couple of staircases, a giant-sized pair of ruby slippers, a disturbing number of flashing lights including some highly regrettable green lasers, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who at least didn’t make a tacky gag about having a mouthful of chipolata this week (that was last Saturday; I didn’t blog about it because I was too busy washing my brain out with bleach in a desperate attempt to make the several resulting unappealing mental images go away). “Over the Rainbow” is the latest in an increasingly long line of let’s-cast-a-musical reality TV shows, and, yes, this search for a Dorothy for a new West End stage production of “The Wizard of Oz” has, at times, been ghastly, teeth-achingly twee television, but it’s also been intermittently compelling, despite the awful musical arrangements and the bombastic production.

First, there’s the great Sheila Hancock on the judging panel. Sharp, acerbic but genuinely supportive, she apparently ripped up the reality TV rulebook in the first ten minutes of her first day and has spent the entire series saying exactly what she thinks, instead of following the usual route of alternating between bland criticism and “you go, girl” clichés. Second, there’s the contestants. Well, some of them, at least (we’ll draw a polite veil over Emilie, who proved again in her one solo line in her reappearance in the final that she couldn’t find a note even if armed with a sat-nav, a compass, a map and a dowsing rod).  The semi-finalists – Steph Fearon, Lauren Samuels, Sophie Evans and Danielle Hope – are all strong pop singers and at least passable actors, and the winner – Danielle Hope – is, I suspect, a real find. She has, I think, been the front-runner for several weeks now. Not because she had the best voice in the competition (that was probably Ms. Samuels), but because she’s consistently shown, despite her relative youth and her lack of formal training, an intelligence in her acting choices, however cheesy the song she was called upon to sing in any given week. Her “Over the Rainbow” in the final was quietly spectacular – she sang the song as if it was a newly-minted piece that nobody had ever heard before, delivered a flawless vocal that was entirely free of the MOR pop grandstanding that’s usually the signature of most of the singing in these contests (most of her fellow contestants succumbed to that particular disease at some point in the competition), and acted the lyrics as Dorothy, finding the emotional impulse underneath each line, each beat, rather than just making pretty sounds that didn’t connect to the lyrical content. More than that, she wasn’t afraid to be still. In the context of a reality TV contest, it was a genuinely remarkable performance, simply because it was, well, genuine.

The thing is, so much about the show is hideous. The TV show is staged and packaged in much the same way as pop-star shows like X-Factor and Pop Idol, as a multi-week full-out assault on common sense and good taste, presided over by a gaggle of sublebrity mediocrities, with tacky, lowest-common-denominator musical direction, sets fashioned from glitter and solidified vomit, and perhaps one sane, intelligent judge among the sleb-mag loons. Even the musical repertoire is similar, despite the fact that it’s not necessarily all that easy to judge whether a singer has the necessary qualities to bring out the best in a selection of Arlen classics from a broad, unsubtle diet of contemporary pop sludge. And yet, somehow, this particular show, I think, has managed to find someone with real potential. For the first time, watching one of these shows, I’m actually interested in shelling out for a theatre ticket.

Oh yes – and after sitting through several weeks of this, I’m now convinced that Charlotte Church is a zombie and John Partridge is a vampire. So there.

Honestly Sincere

After the horse-trading comes the honeymoon. But first, the press conference. Obviously. What’s the use of having cameras if you can’t play to them?

We got a new government the other night. Conveniently, we got it in Prime Time, which is so much more user-friendly than calling the result of an election at 4am when nobody’s watching, unless you happen to be trying to watch EastEnders. Our long (or rather, long-weekend) national nightmare is over, at least for this week.

Certainly, the air is full of talk of optimism, cooperation and compromise. We have a coalition government for the first time in, ooh, yonks. The Tories and Lib-Dems have hammered out a coalition agreement that, essentially, smooths out the most controversial sections of each manifesto into a frothy milkshake of moderate policy goodness. Except it might be laced with arsenic. It’s a brave new world, apparently.

And yet… let’s flashback for a moment, to May 2nd 1997. Depending on whether your sympathies lay with Labour or the Tories, that morning marked either the beginning of an era or the end of one. It was the end of more or less exactly 17 years of Tory government. First-time voters had no memory of any other political party ever having been in power, That morning, whichever side of the fence you were on, it really was a brave new world. Change was in the air, and all over the newspapers, and on every TV channel (granted, for most of us, in 1997 there were only four or five of those, rather than the forty gazillion we have today). When I went out, I could feel it. We could all feel it. However much our perspective might have changed, however much history might now view Blair and his government as having been horribly flawed, that morning there was something new in the air.

I didn’t quite get that today. Now, possibly that’s because I was living in Canada for most of the Blair years, so I only viewed them from a distance, whereas I experienced the full horror of Thatcher and Major (I vividly remember the day Thatcher was forced out of office – I was home sick from school, and I watched the whole thing on TV). But still – same party in power for 13 years, first-time voters once again probably can’t remember anyone else ever having been in power, we have a coalition government for the first time in decades, and it’s supposedly a decisive shift away from the adversarial two-parties-and-a-runner-up system we’ve known and barely tolerated for as many elections as any of us can recall… if Britain on May 2nd 1997 felt like a newly-minted country that had undergone a decisive paradigm shift, surely that should also have been the case on May 12th 2010. But it wasn’t.

There was no theme tune by D:Ream this time around, for which relief much thanks, but there was no great sense of triumph anywhere either, as far as I can see. The brutal truth is that nobody won, so instead of a parade we got a carefully stage-managed spectacle designed to show us all that we’re all winners, even though we probably aren’t, in a press conference in the garden behind Number 10 that contained more fake bonhomie than every television programme Bruce Forsyth ever made rolled into a single nightmarish whole.

There’s something deeply peculiar about watching two people who a week ago had a death-grip on each other’s throats acting like they’re BFF in front of a garden full of journalists. Clegg and Cameron are both smooth TV performers, and we all know that relations between politicians from opposite sides of the house are rarely as frosty as they may seem during, say, micromanaged TV debates or Prime Minister’s Question Time; even so, the smiles seemed to be superglued in place. The overall effect was something like watching Siamese twins who don’t like each other much mugging their way through a rendition of Conrad Birdie’s biggest hit, only without the quiff and the fainting teenage girls. They even managed to laugh off a question about something evil Cameron said about Clegg during the campaign (Q: What’s your favourite joke? A: Nick Clegg. An oldie, not a goodie). They were each doing their best impression of being Honestly Sincere, and they very nearly got away with it. Neither of them pulled a knife, and the Modroc grins held firm.

Except, of course, what we were watching wasn’t quite what it seemed. The extended Cameron-Clegg PDA wasn’t simply about solidifying a coalition agreement in front of the cameras. Here were two men fighting for their political futures, in the full knowledge that those futures may be startlingly brief. Compromise politics are something we’re going to have to get used to, and that’s a good thing if we can get it right, but long-term  inter-party cooperation has not been a major recurring theme in Britain’s political history. When there’s an overall majority on one side of the house or the other, the first-past-the-post system means that our politicians rarely have to make nice to their opponents. The best-case scenario, in this instance, is probably the best possible outcome of this unwinnable election: a stable government, with the worst excesses of a Tory administration sanded down and counterbalanced by at least some parts of the Lib Dem reform package, a combination that, if it works, should be more palatable to the progressive majority than one-party Tory rule.

But it may not work, and if it fails there will be consequences for both Cameron and Clegg. Cameron should have been able to secure an outright majority, but he didn’t. Clegg has taken his party to bed with an opponent that his grassroots members do not trust. Labour, sidelined in the coalition negotiations, are regrouping and shopping for a new leader, and hopefully have the basic common sense to make it not be Ed Balls, although Prime Minister Balls would undoubtedly be a priceless comedy gift for the ages. Nobody wants another election, but Cameron will have to go to the country if the coalition fails. In that event, the likeliest outcome is that both the Tories and the Lib Dems will be punished at the polls; the likely result of that is that Cameron and Clegg would spend the duration of the next parliament in Siberia, or at least on the back benches. These are relatively young men, and their careers would recover from that kind of five-year blip; William Hague has managed to bounce back from his spectacular electoral crash-and-burn in 2001. But that can’t be the trajectory either man has mapped out for himself.

And, away from the grotesquely bucolic scene in the Downing Street garden, the cracks were already beginning to show. Clearly the acting coaches hadn’t quite managed to fit everybody in since the coalition negotiations were concluded the night before. When the BBC asked Vince Cable about his new job as a minister in the coalition cabinet, the pause before he answered was almost Pinteresque. The pause, indeed, was more eloquent than the stammered answer that followed, and there lies the problem. Cameron and Clegg are media-savvy political operators. They know how to tap-dance for the camera. Cable, for all his considerable skill, really is honestly sincere, and honest sincerity may not be the best quality when it comes to negotiating the delicately choreographed dance of mutual compromise that lies ahead.

Crash! Bang! Wallop! zzzzzzz….

So, apparently, the world didn’t come to an end last Friday. Pity really, I have to go to Tesco later and an apocalypse would liven the place up a bit. We had an election – God, don’t I know we had an election, I mostly work from home and I watched most of it – and nothing happened. Two of the three major parties appeared to be campaigning in slow motion until the last three days. We had four-and-a-half hours of painfully stage-managed, over-regulated TV debates between the three party leaders, in which the two feasible candidates for PM performed, mostly, appallingly badly while the leader of the least major of the three major parties seemed to go into overdrive, and suddenly the numbers started to change, but then the nation went to the polls… and nothing happened. We’d been gleefully promised all kinds of mayhem in the entirely predictable event that the polls returned a hung parliament, but on the night the numbers stacked up with a sort of numbing inevitability. Nobody won, everybody lost. We didn’t even get a Portillo Moment – just Comedy!Lembit and Jacqui Smith biting their lips and wobbling on camera, and they’d both been doing that at least twice a week for years anyway.

There’s no party with an overall majority, which means that our various political factions have been engaged in closed-door meetings in various combinations since Friday afternoon.  This, of course, means that our most cherished institution – the 24-hour news media – has spent the entire weekend analysing the crap out of a series of conversations that none of the participants care to discuss, on camera at least, giving us an almost orgasmic frenzy of kremlinological dissection of gesture, rumour and hypothesis, leavened with the implicit subtext that the sky may fall at any moment.

I just looked outside. The sky’s still where it’s supposed to be. So is the Sky dish. I’m shocked.

Our news networks, bless them, are running out of language to describe stasis. Nothing much happened during the election campaign, but nothing happened on a regular basis – a lot of people who look like middle managers appeared on camera walking through factories and supermarkets with their sleeves rolled up, low- and high-ranking members of all parties were caught saying regrettable things on camera/with the mike on, and potential embarrassments like Jacqui Smith and Comedy!Lembit were fitted with electronic ankle bracelets and confined to their constituencies on pain of death/multiple appearances on appalling reality TV shows. The sun rose, the sun set, and life continued as usual, apart from that week when a pesky volcano in the North Atlantic blew the campaign off the front pages by closing all the airports. But since we voted for deadlock, nothing has happened two or three times an hour, and we’re all struggling to keep up. Sorry, BBC, if the fourth meeting that nobody’s talking about finished three hours ago and the participants didn’t talk about it to camera beyond the blandest platitudes as they left, it’s not ‘breaking news’. There’s not going to be a quick agreement between any of the parties, because any deal, whether for a formal coalition or a more relaxed cooperation agreement, is going to involve at least one party leader eating a great big shit sandwich when the deal is agreed, and an even bigger shit sandwich six months to a year later if the deal goes south and we end up having another election. Two parties want a reform of the voting system, one doesn’t, and the one that doesn’t has the most seats. So, deadlock.

I should be concerned. I am concerned. I cast my vote for electoral reform. As I numbed myself into a news coma over the weekend, I signed online petitions, joined Facebook campaign groups, emailed MPs, officials and party leaders to show my support for major electoral reform. I want change. I do. I’ll happily sign petitions, write letters, attend marches and all the rest of it. But I also, on the third day of negotiations, want an immediate ban on media pundits and political journalists beginning sentences with “if”, “I don’t think”, “we shouldn’t underestimate”, and “we’re not getting much information, but”. If this goes on much longer, I’ll want the ban imposed by an army of Turok-Han carrying outsized cricket bats. Enough already.

The problem with nothing continuing to happen in the aftermath of nothing happening is that the dialogue just. isn’t. bad. enough. Tory politicians and the more hysterical factions of the press – get your hands out of your pockets, Daily Mail, I’m looking at YOU – promised us Armageddon if we were faced with a hung parliament. It sounded quite exciting. I had visions of barricades, mayhem, rending garments, public shouting matches, disaster-movie dialogue, perhaps a cabal of B-list action stars led by Jean-Claude Van Damme swooping into Whitehall on nuclear-powered unicycles to kick ass, restore order, and impose a fairer electoral system. Instead, I got a series of men in dull suits and bad ties mumbling about making constructive progress, and a group of protesters forcing the dismal Sky News presenter Kay Burley to go to commercial by standing behind her as she tried to conduct an interview and demanding, in unison, that she be sacked. Much as I might sympathise with the sentiment, it’s not a fair trade.

Faced with such disappointment, what does one do? Particularly, what does one do when one’s bank balance, this week, will not transport one to a remote hut on an otherwise uninhabited South Pacific island with room service and a stack of recent literary novels? Why, one turns to the cheesier movie channels, of course! What saved my weekend? “Céline”, a Canadian made-for-TV biopic of Quebec’s most uninhibitedly tacky diva, starring two actresses whose names I can’t remember as Ms. Dion herself, along with Franco-Ontarian musical theatre diva Louise Pitre as Mama Dion and Enrico “Keith Mars” Colantoni as the supremely creepy René Angélil. And it was, thank God, a telemovie to treasure, albeit for most of the wrong reasons. The actress whose name I can’t remember (and, obviously, can’t be bothered to look up) who played the adult Céline had two (constipated) facial expressions and, oddly, three noses. In succession, not all at once. The production values were magnificently valueless – Toronto and Hamilton stood in for, well, everywhere, and the props, costumes and most of the script were purchased from the Dollarama in Toronto’s Dufferin Mall. The dialogue was special. “Buy yourself some shoes, you deserve it!” “What happened to our dream?” “You must promise me you won’t touch her!” And my favourite – ” I’m not crazy about this song, René. And I’m not sure about this film. I mean, come on. Everyone knows the boat sinks!”. Ms. Pitre – if you’ve never heard her sing, go and buy her records NOW, she’s sensational – and Mr. Colantoni gamely attempted to lend the proceedings a dignity they did not deserve, mostly by wearing bad clothes and worse wigs with conviction and delivering their dialogue without corpsing or throwing up in their mouths.  Sure, it was a horror show – but none of it took place in Westminster.

Yes, I know. I could just not watch the news. Get real. This week, the news networks and the grimmer offerings of the True Movies channel seem remarkably similar – I’m simultaneously repulsed by and glued to both. Thank God for deadlines.