Nul Points

Ah Eurovision. I love it, no really I do, and I'm not even gay. Seriously it always is a bit of fun watching the truly dreadful entries, wondering if Turkey will give Greece any points, trying to work out what the fuck the Israeli selection committee have been smoking and occasionally it throws up something really rather good in terms of tunes - one entry that sticks is from a couple of years ago when Belgium came second with a piece of folk-electronica sung in a completely made up language - enjoy it thanks to the miracle of youtube here.

This year has already been good for some laughs already with last weekend's "Making Your Mind Up" (see, see what they've done there, putting the old winning song title as the one for the choose-the-song show, fucking hilarious already) show. My god what a parade of bloody losers and has-beens. In the heavens some fickle deity had decided these sad specimens were worth one more throw of the dice only to be humiliated as the washed-up failures they truly are on national television.

First up we had some woman who was an ex atomic kitten or something who turned up wearing what looked like her bedroom curtains and whose unique selling point seemed to be that she was from Liverpool, it certainly wasn't her singing ability. Then we had proof that whom the gods wish to destroy they first run over with a 4x4 and then humiliate on TV for on wobbled that guy whose name I can never remember, Brian something I think, but he was in East 17 (Note - don't get confused with Heaven 17 who were good). Well we know who had the talent in that band don't we and it wasn't this chap and what on earth possessed him to pick a song with notes he couldn't actually hit? After that we actually got something half way decent with a rap act who could actually sing; well OK the women in the band could, in the manner of this genre of music the blokes seemed to be there to wear lots of bling, look vaguely menacing and "gangsta", and occasionally go "Uh-Huh" or "Come-on" into the microphone in an accent from New York's Lower East Side although they are from Surbiton and the nearest they ever got to NYC was when they went on holiday to Lyme Regis as a kid. Not a bad tune I thought but all a bit yawn and not nearly gimmicky enough after Lordi raised the bar so high last year. Again though a bunch of has-beens who had a couple of minor hits and attempting to claw their way back into the limelight... but Eurovision guys? Well that's your "street" credentials down the toilet.

So that's half way through, Mrs Dracunculus is happy as she's getting to drool over John "Captain Jack Harkness" Barryman who is commenting on the songs (I haven't the heart to tell her that he's on the other bus) and I'm the best part of half way into a bottle of Aussie Shiraz so I'm well on the way to happy... so what's next?

Well we have someone from France singing a song that sounds like a mash-up between Cindy Lauper's "True Colours" and "The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond", i.e. pretty fucking terrible. And hang on, isn't this supposed to be the UK entry so how come it's being sung by someone from across the channel? Not that that ever stopped Luxembourg as they seem to field people from anywhere but Luxembourg, I seem to recall that they even roped in that Greek lardarse Nana Moussaka (or whatever) at one point. Ah now we get onto some over the top campness and two boys (well one boy and one boy who would like to be a lady) and a couple of girls with a cute song and dance routine and to be honest the only song I can actually remember the chorus to three days later so that's a winner if ever I heard one. Sooch's song had "Eurovision" written over it in three foot high neon pink letters and to be honest me and Mrs D looked at each other after the first 16 bars and went "That's won".

Well that only left the much talked about comeback of former Darkness front man Justin Hawkins. So off they go and it starts well with his co star Ms Brown heading up singing duties and actually sounding good with a nice enough song but then on flounces Justin looking like a poor man's Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen and opens his gob whereupon this shrieking noise came out of his face. I'm not sure what it was but singing it decidedly wasn't. Then he "played" the guitar a bit before throwing it at Terry Wogan (you missed an opportunity for a few extra votes there Justin, you should have wrapped it around his neck) before shrieking some more and flouncing around. Thank fuck that these songs are limited to three minutes.

And I see in the news (well OK, on Yahoo) that he's got himself all upset that he lost and that the reason is that the British public are racist or stupid for not picking him. No Justin, they just know a washed up has-been pseudo glam-rock star who could not sing if his life depended on it when they see it. "But (co star) Beverlei Brown looked and sounded fantastic" he wails. Yes Justin, she did, but you looked fucking stupid and wailed like a banshee so you lost.

Can't wait for Helsinki in May!