Don't fancy yours much

As you're all aware Europe just keeps getting bigger. Maybe not so much physically despite the best efforts of the Dutch but with the increasing fragmentation of what used to be the Soviet Union and its satellites every time I take a break to scratch my bum a new country seems to come into existence. This is most evident when it comes to the acme of broadcast television, the Eurovision Song Contest. Now despite the oddness of Israel being an honorary part of Europe on these occasions there are now so many countries that if they were to try and run the contest in one go it would last longer than a Wagnerian opera (and still be more interesting) so now they do a semi final where all the nations who haven't chipped in a fat wedge of cash to get a bye to the final have to do a sing-off in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber... oh no hang on, that's a different show.

It's all a bit stupid really as all that happens is these newly minted nations are, despite what their local nationalist politicians would have you believe, are all best mates and, using the telephone still being such a novelty, all vote for each other regardless of how bloody awful the song was.

However although I didn't see all of it (due to having to support the fucking crappy overnight batch run - see t'other blog for details) and as I've mentioned before I rather like Eurovision for the silly acts, awful songs and occasional gem that crops up. However if last night's entries are anything to go by it's going to be a bloodly long night on Saturday. If anyone's interested I'm thinking of liveblogging it (cue: tumbleweed blows through blog).

First up are Bulgaria with a song, my Bulgarian speaking friend Bogdan assures me, is something about a young man and a wild pony (nudge nudge, wink wink). Not sure what they are getting up to but with him drumming and her screeching in anything but the key the song was in it isn't going to be getting any sleep. Then we have Israel's "controversial" entry about getting blown up which was sung in a mixture of English, French, Hebrew and Shite, was about as controversial as a kitten playing with a ball of string and conveniently ignored the fact that the only country in the middle east with a button to actually push is Israel. I must admit that the entries then started to merge into a blur of off-key wailing after that but a couple of notable "what the fucks" were Switzerland's song about vampires sung by a chap who really didn't get the Vampire Lestat seductive thing and just looked like a total prune (who could not sing, but then he is a "DJ" so not entirely unexpected), Iceland doing some gloomy Deep Purple-esque heavy rock ballad which was about as heavy as one of those dolphin helium balloons the sell in shopping malls to kids and Georgia who were notable for coming out about eighth or ninth and actually being the first song where the singer actually made it through the whole song in the right keys and without going flat. I mean I know the songs are supposed to be a bit daft but for Fafnir's sake you do actually need to sing them.

Nul points