Tomorrow there will be parties all over the world. There will be a celebration of all that is corny, hackneyed and clichéd beyond words. We will all take part, in our own way, either by attending such a party, or by refusing to attend as we think they are just daft. And this is the thing... we will all want to know who has won. And we will all have a favourite.
I’m talking, of course, about the Eurovision Song Contest. Coming this year from Lisbon, Portugal, just a couple of hours down the road from our little farm.
It is truly a ‘marmite’ event. It is either loved or hated. The interesting thing, though, is that those who love it do so for the same reasons as those who hate it have for hating it.
For example, at the parties, people will gather and – drinks in hand – criticise the costumes, the sets, the appearance and the lyrics as being too glitzy, too simple, too ludicrous and so on. The naysayers in the ‘hate it’ camp will do the same thing. The big difference is that to those who love this barmy event, it is those very qualities which have made it so endearing; so much a cult thing.
For example, at the parties, people will gather and – drinks in hand – criticise the costumes, the sets, the appearance and the lyrics as being too glitzy, too simple, too ludicrous and so on. The naysayers in the ‘hate it’ camp will do the same thing. The big difference is that to those who love this barmy event, it is those very qualities which have made it so endearing; so much a cult thing.
Sometimes, these parties become very complex, ludicrously well-organised events, with different people taking the part of a country and actually voting, as if to replicate the real country’s panels. They see how close they get to the real result. The idea is, of course, to have a favourite song and then watch as it crashes, ignominiously or, against all possible musical taste, succeeds.
There is even a perverse delight in the dreadfulness of it all. It began with Katie Boyle, a multilingual, calm presence, whose nil points has been mocked ever since and included the ever-droll Sir Terry Wogan, who managed to extract comedy from almost every circumstance, with some memorable lines.
My favourite is when he described the contest, in 1997, as “It’s supposed to be bad. And the worse it is, the more fun it is.” I have a theory that the sort of awful, kitsch contest that it has become exists on a circular spectrum of taste.
As things get more and more dreadful, they eventually become so crazily bad that they begin to become madly different and even good. Graham Norton, who took over from Sir Terry when he died (Terry, not Graham), has continued the tradition of poking fun at the singers, the costumes, the other country’s presenters and the songs, of course. His classic, for me, was in 2012, when he said of the Russian entry, “It’s an unusual Eurovision this year. There are lots of songs
that are really quite good and brilliantly sung. This is not one of those.”
So, I challenge you. Go and get a group of others who are likely to end up looking for an excuse for a party on Saturday and have a ‘Eurovision Night’. After all, Abba won it so it can’t be all bad, can it? Oh, hang on, there was ‘Brotherhood of Man’, wasn’t there? And that odd lady with the beard…