I see Pete Waterman's been put in charge of this year's Eurovision entry.
Is there much point in doing this anymore. We didn't take it seriously for years, mocked our European neighbours and turned the whole thing into a high camp carnival and then when we start coming bottom it can't possibly be our fault but the fact that Eastern European's block vote for each other.
Well that may be true, but the difference is, they do take it seriously. To some countries it's a matter of national pride, rather than being a nation joke. It's just another in a long line of things that have to be seen as ironic and can't just be enjoyed for what they are. It's not even that I'm a huge fan - I only like the scoring, but all this guilty pleasure business has ruined music.
You can't just like ELO. Your love for them is either the love that dare not speak it's name or you're dismissed as a crank who knows nothing about music.
Some years ago - and TT you'll remember this - I had a boss who lived in a fantasy world. He shared a cleaner with Sharon Stone (despite her living in LA and he in Rotherhithe), he once helped Tony Bennett go house-hunting, his aunt was Crossroads muppet Amy Turtle, he was the film critic for Time Out, his late father was the first man in the UK to have a successful hand transplant and he single-handedly managed to change the liquor laws in Aberystwyth, among many, many other things.
One of these other things was that he once found himself sitting next to Terry Hall on a bar stool and they got to talking and the upshot was he put together this album of the stars of the day doing versions of past Eurovision-winning songs called A Song For Eurotrash. He even managed to get Bananarama to reform!
All utter tosh of course; except this one's actually true. I recently tracked this CD down on eBay just to make sure I wasn't suffering from false memory syndrome. It's all there in the foreword. The bar stool, Terry Hall, blah, blah, blah. It's long, long out of print but does have some interesting numbers. It's tie in with Eurotrash, the long forgotten Friday-night let's laugh at Johnny Foreigner post-pub car crash campathon hosted by arms behind back lollipop-headed frog Antoine De Caunes, and it's exactly this kind of thing that has done for the Eurovision Song Contest.
But who's complaining? Here's Terry Hall & Sinead O'Connor.
