In Ireland it is apparently a hanging offense to be lesbian and hate the Eurovision Song Contest. And yet here I stand, both lesbian and in receipt of vast oceans of loathing for this annual, continent spanning, televisual torture.
Eurovision is camp, and therefore if you are a card-carrying member of the LGBT Brigade, you are supposed to love all things camp. For the record, there really aren’t any card-carrying members of the LGBT Brigade, there are just a lot of gay pillocks who act like there are. But we were speaking of camp, and gayness, and song contests.
I think, that after almost 60 posts on this blog, it’s probably pretty clear by now that I am a girl, who likes other girls. Yep I’m gay, but I hate what is usually described as camp. Graham Norton, makes me think longingly of shotguns loaded with deer-slugs. Drag queens, make me dream about cans of hairspray and cigarette lighters. Well you get the picture.
The Eurovision Song Contest however, makes me desire only three small things for Christmas. A couple of tonnes of Composition 4, a radio detonator and a good vantage point from which to enjoy the ensuing carnage.
For those reading who have yet to discover the delights of this European institution, I shall explain. The E.S.C. is what happens when you tell twenty odd European nations, and Israel for some incomprehensible reason, to gather a singer a piece to compete.
“What do they compete for?” you ask.
Good question. They compete for the opportunity for their country, to host the following years contest. At vast expense. That’s about it really. Oh, and the women all dress either like Hollywood stars receiving an Oscar, or like the village bike, waiting to receive a prize of a very different texture. While the men, somehow, all end up looking like a Tory ministers secret, rent-boy lover.
We won’t get into Jedward here. It’s enough to say that someday, I fully expect Ireland as a whole, to be brought before the Court of Human Rights in the Hague over those two.
With one, literally one, exception I have never yet enjoyed any Eurovision performance. To me they all sound like one long liturgy of bland. The only change from year to year, being the current form of bland to be most in vogue. And ultimately that is my problem with the E.S.C.
I don’t like the cheesy commentary. I don’t like the ridiculous, overblown production made out of what is essential, continental karaoke. I don’t like that if you’re gay it’s expected of you to like it all.
But I hate, truly loathe, the sheer tsunami of bland and mediocre, that my ears get assaulted by on those years where I am unable to escape. So much so in fact, that I am forced to ask, why? Why the bland? Why the mediocre?
Every nation has singers of superlative skill and talent. So why do we insist on sending, what can charitably be described as aural rape, every goddess damned year? Just one year why don’t all the nations of Europe, and Israel for some incomprehensible reason, agree to actually send their best?
That’s it. I’m taking a stand and this is my challenge to Europe. One year, just one year, I challenge every nation of Europe and Israel for…oh you get it by now, to send only their very best singer. Then hold a Eurovision Song Contest where the performers are required to stand still. No dancers, no fetish-wear, no looking and moving like a hooker hopped up on crystal meth. No they just stand there and sing their guts out.
And at the end everyone votes for the best singer and song.
That I might actually enjoy, because that might actually be worth watching.
Failing that bring back these guys, I did say I liked one act…
My Random Ruminations. 