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Why I Love...Eurovision

Terry Wogan
  • Posted at 11:42am
  • 13 August 2007
  • by DavidWhitehouse-RT

In these darks days of international tensions, wars, dispute and espionage, few common languages remain. One that does, though, is great pop music; a unifying force for good from the Beatles to Britney Spears and from Janis Joplin to Justin Timberlake. If only some of it could find its way into the Eurovision Song Contest.

Unfortunately, one of the few occasions when the countries of our continent come together doesn't allow a little thing like quality to get in the way. This, however, matters not. We don't watch Eurovision to be blown away by stunning compositions - that would be like watching Sir Alan Sugar on The Apprentice in the hope that he'll take one of the business-speak babbling prospective employees in his arms and gently sing them to sleep. No, we watch Eurovision because few things are as enjoyable as poking fun at our neighbours.

I don't doubt for a second that our European cousins find as much joy in mocking British stereotypes as we do theirs, and who can blame them? We have, after all, fielded some of the most embarrassing acts in the history of music. The woefully out-of-tune Jemini, two sub-Butlin's Red Coats from a couple of years back, are a case in point.

And 2007's inexplicable effort was no better: four creosote-coated no-marks dressed in latex air-steward uniforms burping an awful chain of sexual innuendos that would make Frankie Howerd turn to Kenneth Williams and blush. It isn't pop music. It's unpop music.

And that's why we don't feel bad about a good old-fashioned hearty chuckle at the expense of Switzerland's reluctance to abandon yodelling as a form of artistic expression, or the occasional Finnish dalliance with death metal like 2007 winners Lordi, a group who looked like Wizzard if they'd been in a plane crash.

Let's not pretend, though, that the joy of Eurovision would be anything but for the work of Terry Wogan. Wogan is a Eurovision staple for the British audience. In over 20 years presenting it he has perfected a unique voice: slightly apathetic, lightly sarcastic and suitably without any level of seriousness whatsoever. Without Wogan's pretend drunk schtick, gentle theorising about the judges or conspiracy theories based upon international diplomacy in wartime, Eurovision for us would be nothing.

However defunct, pointless and artistically bereft the Eurovision Song Contest is, it somehow remains event television. What other formats have the power to make people stay in to watch in groups any more?

As long as we remember just how utterly bloody stupid the whole thing is, which is to say that as long as we follow Wogan's lead, Eurovision remains an essential addition to the television schedules.

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