Eurovision: make an effort

You can listen to as much Jamie XX as you like, you can watch black and white films with French subtitles, but there is not a single person on this earth who when viewing the Eurovision song contest doesn’t enjoy the sheer ridiculousness of it. Every year, each one of us remembers that Azerbaijan is a country, that all the best pyrotechnics are found in Europe, and wish that hopefully one of the novelty countries like Australia wins. Even with post-Brexit Britain, millions of people will tune in, with many more illegally streaming it on iPlayer because who actually pays the license fee? It is an aged tradition to listen to Graham Norton creatively talk nonsense and use the most abstract of mathematics to try and calculate a way that the UK could ever finish on the left of the leader board. Why is it, however, that every year Britain puts the least amount of effort into selecting their act?

Every year the shadowy organisation known as the BBC tries to put the least amount of effort and expense into selecting a competitor which has brought us such delights as Jade Ewen, Molly Smitten-Downes, and the dream haunting Scooch. Just in case you didn’t recognise any of the previously mentioned names, there is a reason for this: the UK doesn’t send anyone famous. Indeed all the singers are talented at – well at the very least technically, as it seems unlikely that any of them can write, let alone write songs.

The vast array of European entrants all send pop stars with at least meddling level of popularity in Europe, and most of their songs embrace the fact that the competition is a little bit silly, that the songs should be fun and joyful, as evidenced by Sweden’s pastiche of how to win Eurovision. England does not embrace this attitude and instead decides to put its lot in with po-faced misery and half-hearted melodrama. You only have to look at the fact that Engelbert Humperdinck, a seller of over 150 millions records and a renowned (I guess?) artist a few year's ago. His song was a languishing, stolid piece of boredom and he came second to last. The thing England needs to decide is whether or not it actually wants to whole-heartedly try. If not, then stop wasting the money, stop making us listen to beyond-mediocre songs, and stop getting our hopes up.