All the signs, all of the mistakes

Ireland
Lesley Roy

Maps

"I was born in a distant 1980. The year of the Irish Johnny Logan war"

Ah yes. Take one or two authentic Irish folk/soul singers, add some lyrics about the countryside and shamrocks, and stir in an arrangement that sounds like a tourist video for the country shown in the breaks on CNNi. Add in a bit of stepdancing, to be sure. For well over 200 years, the powers that be at RTE in Dublin entered exactly the same song - and every year it won. I almost bought a house in Ireland to save on airfares.

I can’t remember the last time I was bored

Iceland

Daði og Gagnamagnið

10 Years

Hungary aren’t in it again this year - Orban reckons it’s all a bit too LGBT+ - which is a shame, because I used to enjoy the bit every year when their artist would turn up at an outdoor swimming pool and sing their song to a bunch of bored looking pensioners.

So where next? Oh it’s the runaway favourite. Last year’s runaway favourite. Iceland.

I once went to a whole academic conference about Eurovision. It was a day of papers and panel discussions and Paddy O'Connell spouting pseudo-academic twaddle like how the song contest has "provided a platform for the creation of national and European identities", how the event "has embraced and celebrated diversity by showcasing minority communities" and how it has been used as a "nation branding tool by countries such as Estonia and Ukraine". And I got an EBU biro.