So we lost Eurovision. We deserved to. Flying the Flag was a terrible song. It was a terrible performance. It was stuck in the 80s, and proved just how pinned to the past the UK is. We got 19 points, which is 13 more than we deserved. And the only reason we deserved just 13 points fewer is that it would leave us a single point ahead of Ireland, whose entry was probably the worst in Eurovision history.

Except for Gemini.

Anyhow, Mark threw his usual Eurovision party and we all gathered around the table of sticky, sickly food we’d assembled because nobody had thought to bring anything sensible, savoury and nourishing. We watched the previews again, drew up the scorecard and settled down to watch.

Two of my favourites had already been knocked out. Switzerland had been tipped to win the whole thing with Vampires are Alive, but it didn’t make it through the semis, and Norway went the same way with a Spanish style toe-tapper that, like the UK, was stuck somewhere in the past, although perhaps by only five years or so.

It was clear from the off that it was going to be a very eastern-dominated contest. Only one country that wasn’t previously a signatory to the Warsaw Pact qualified in the semis, and nothing west of Hungary and Belarus scored more than 100 points on the night itself (the winner, Serbia, bagged 268, which rather puts things into perspective).

Of course, the whingers will say ‘it’s all political’, and ‘it’s all about tactical block voting’, but it’s not. We did the usual round of home voting as we watched it, and our results were very eastern-leaning. Moldova, Georgia, Finland, Serbia, Russian, Ukraine and Slovenia were our top seven. Then came the first western European nation, Germany (Finland WW2 decisions left it so strongly influenced (some might say ‘controlled’) by the Soviet Union during the cold war that it can be safely considered eastern Europe).

So the sad truth of the fact is that the UK put in a rubbish song and earned itself the rubbish result it deserved. The sad scandal of the fact is that despite that shameful result we’ll still qualify for next year’s contest ahead of those far more deserving of a place. The sad predictable outcome is that because we know we don’t need to even try we’ll enter another rubbish song next year. The sad eventuality is that once again the British public will dismiss our next dismal result as ‘predictable’ and ‘political’ and further degrade what is, at the end of the day, just a bit of fun.

Isn’t it time that the UK, Germany, France and Spain (all of whom scored fewer than 50 points apiece this year) lost their automatic right to qualify, regardless of how generously they bankroll the contest?

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 12th, 2007 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Europe, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.