SerbiaAnd so to Serbia, previous home of the turbofolk lego man, that man with big hair singing about his shoes, and best of all, the subversive romany lesbian that swept to victory in 2007 and caused the Belgrade mayor to have to retrain his entire police to be more "tolerant".
Eastern Europe stealing our points? Same sex relationships? Gypsies? Daily Mail island almost relaunched the Balkan conflict overnight.
San MarinoBless. The entire population of San Marino - Eurovision's smallest participant - could fit inside Ahoy Rotterdam, and still leave room for the stroopwafel stalls.
They first entered back in 2008 in Serbia with a man that looked suspiciously like 80's illusionist David Copperfield - but it came last with 5 points in the Tuesday night semi. Apparently I was there, but I suspect on listening to it back that at the time I was trying to find a drink, the toilet or my will to live.
RussiaWe all have a hobby. Some of us like painting, or dancing, or archery. Some of us are into flashmobbing, or the Wombles. Some of us follow the Hothouse Flowers around on tour. Some people like taking off their shirt and banging their head. All of these people are, of course, massive losers, and to be honest they all need to get a life.
I, on the other hand, am quite different. I live life to the full, with conviction and purpose. You see, when I'm not tending to my collection of MP3s of Eurovision entries over the years, or my extensive collection of sung local radio jingles through the ages, I document, collect and catalogue video clips of Eurovision interval acts- ready to hand down to the next generation of Dickinsons.
RomaniaWhy do they do this? Team Romania describe ROXEN as “a labyrinth of an artist, with a dreamy sound and mesmerising voice that creates an entirely new universe with every release”- and TVR’s press release argues that it’s “hard to disagree given the breadth of material the Cluj-Napoca chanteuse has released in recent times”.
“With a dreamy vibe and a cosmic look, Roxen thinks that music is a sort of therapy for her, but also for her fans”, it says. “Her songs possess the magical power of healing and bringing harmony. Her music is universal, just like love. Roxen is also passionate about other artistic fields: painting, acting, writing and dance. Roxen finds relaxation in meditating and travelling. Roxen would like her music to travel beyond the planet Earth in the Universe.”
There are two sorts of Eurovision entry from Portugal. There's the jaunty sort - like this - that you might hear in a pool bar in Albufeira while you're hurling down locally produced spirits as some nineteen year old looks after your children on three days training all of which they were late for. And then there's entries like this. Pure, uncut dreary Portuguese shit.
It says here that the group “Black Mamba” feel most at home playing live gigs and concerts, and have enjoyed playing on some of the most iconic festival stages there are. At the Festival Marés Vivas in Porto, The Black Mamba shared the main stage with Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Jamie Cullum and The Script.
PolandThe Swish Family Dickinson went on a beach holiday at Easter to Poland the other year, and it was glorious.
I don’t mean the weather - it pissed it down all week and was bitterly bloody cold - but while downing cans of Polish lager I discovered an extraordinary strain of Polish schlager, called “Disco Polo”.
NorwayScandipop. That's what I like. Fun, bouncy, carefully crafted caffeiney disco-pop songs that pick you up when you're having a bad day. Like Abba or Agnes or even the A*Teens. And do you know what I also don't mind from a place like Norway? Three minutes of miserable nordic noir, like this. That’s fine too.
There is something both glorious and utterly miserable about spending January and February watching Eurovision finals from around Europe. It's glorious because you end up with a Spotify playlist of about 250 new scandi hits and Moldovan shits to get you into work in the morning. But it's also miserable, because utterly amazing songs end up being rejected by boring, play-it-safe televoters from their host countries.
North MacedoniaThe country formerly known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but now known as North Macedonia barely ever makes it past the semi finals, and even then they tend not to deserve it - I mean look at this balkan trouser-suit ballad that I managed to miss in its entirety as I took a carefully timed three minute wizz (air). As if!
MoldovaAnd so to Moldova, a tiny, landlocked republic wedged between Romania to its west and Ukraine to its north that, fact fans, is officially the least visited country in Europe. I can’t imagine why.
Mind you - imagine if they won it and it was in Chisinau! You'd be rattling along on the train from Romania on your way to the CHISINAU CIRCUS: THE PREMIER EVENTS HALL IN ALL OF MOLDOVA wolfing down some kind of pork dish in a restaurant car that looks like your grandma’s front room (a window framed by heavy purple fluted curtains, silk flowers, a faint smell of cigarettes and orange formica tables) when the conductor comes and chats.
Malta Ah Malta. Lovely lovely Malta. They love the Eurovision in Malta, and they love us. Every year without fail they give us 10 or 12 points, even when we enter rubbish like this.
In return we give them nul points and then send them thousands of gurning, thuggish holidaymakers to urinate against their beach bars and harass their daughters every summer.
LithuaniaI was at this thing on Zoom the other day in a breakout room and one of those people that knows me from another thing was talking about something important to them, and slowly their grip on my attention started to loosen and my mind drifted away from the conscious reality of sitting there listening to them as my brain gently rose like a pretty hot air balloon ascending the heavens and gliding across a landscape of idle thoughts, while back on Earth my face was beaming onto their QHD+ screen in eye watering, razor sharp lifelike detail saying "mmm" and "ooh" and "really?" and occasionally arching its eyebrows like an actor in an advert who’s been asked to wordlessly indicate that his cough lozenges work.
Latvia The thing is, I'm not, by all accounts, a very easy person to talk to. The socially awkward chit chat I do do tends to be so laced with sneery, off putting West Midlands sarcasm that most people avoid me at all costs unless they (and I) are drunk - so for those that do attempt conversation, my Eurovision obsession at least offers SOMETHING to hang the opening gambit on. "Where is Eurovision this year", they try, "Who's our entry this year", or "Are you going this year" are all standards, followed closely by "What's your favourite ever entry?"
Well I just don't know really- there's these bewitching Maltese eyes from 2004, this Macedonian masterpiece from 2000 that sounds like your annoying little sister has formed a girl group in your kitchen or perhaps the Swiss entry from 2004 when the lead singer was so excited that he smacked himself in the face with his mic.
ItalyI always quite liked the Italian entries when I was a kid. Not as much as ronenj53, of course. "She is so sensual, the way she walks, the lovely way she presents the song" he says about 1985's classic, "and the combination between them is great- they give us the impression that the song was born, for both of them".
Yep, it's that heartwarming story of a beautiful romance between a 56 year old provincial bank manager and a 22 year old counter assistant. Magic oh magic indeed.
IsraelAll of these cool commentators banging on about Russian troll farms and Trump and the Canary with all the coherence of a 1200 word media studies essay in the first year of an undergraduate degree think that propaganda, fake news and information wars are new. Well I’ve got news for you, sunshine.
Back in 1978, for example, Jordanian broadcaster JRTV decided to replace the performance of the Israeli entry with pictures of daffodils. Then, three quarters of the way through the voting when it was clear that they were cruising towards a win with their classic "Ah! Barnaby!" JRTV yanked the broadcast, cut to the news, and falsely announced that the winner was... Belgium!
Ireland
"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.
IcelandHungary 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.
GreeceSome countries throw half their GDP at Eurovision, but even when your total GDP is the cost of a pint in Copenhagen airport you can still pull off a masterpiece.
In 2010 for example the Greeks were so skint they handed the whole business of song picking to Universal Music Europe, and then stuck their "National Final" in the Hellenic equivalent of Westfield, with an tiny audience of customers bored queuing in TK Maxx. Look closely and you won't even see any proper speakers - the sound was piped through the shopping centre PA system as she mimed in the dark.
GermanyNow. You might be sat alone at your laptop staring at the election results, drinking a can of Breakers from the corner shop and wallowing in self hatred at memories of recent UK entrants, but even Humperdoink, Blue, Josh Dubovnie, Scooch, Gemini, DJ Daz and that bin man off the X Factor haven't done as badly in the past decade as the Germans.
Apart from that year when Lena sung about wearing new underwear (they're blue - I wore them just the other day), they have done really really fucking badly. Of course, they (like us) are one of the "Big Five" and thus help bankroll the whole thing, so they’ve tended not to care given they (like us) get an automatic ticket to the final (in case you've not noticed there are two semi finals on during the week leading up covered on BBC3, which is why you can get three hours in on the Saturday and STILL not see your sweepstake pick).
GeorgiaIt's not that long ago that the Eurovision audience - largely bored local dignitaries in the host countries - were expected to sit still, keep quiet and politely applaud each miserable entry.
But ever since the Eastern Europeans started holding it in giant stadiums and cheap air travel meant fans could actually get there, the audience and its cheering and costumes and what our friends in the east brand as "exuberance" have been a big part of the show - holding up their phone torches for the middle eight of ballads, making us look like wankers by dressing in full Union Jack suits behind presenter links, and waving their flags. Their massive flags.
FranceFrance were instrumental in founding the "Concours Eurovision de la chanson" (and securing funding from the CIA for what was seen at the time as an important bit of pro-Western propaganda), and to this day insist on bits of the presentation on the night being read out in French (hence "Douze Points" and your Nan being confused at us being called "Roy and Minnie").
But right from the early days of the contest when it consisted of 5 countries, Katie Boyle and "Boom bang a ding a dong" they were pissing about being aloof and snooty. Every other country that's joined Europe's biggest party has realised it's all about bright colours, and key changes, and flashmobs, and fire curtains, and sequins, and exploding cubes (can Eric beat the cube) and prosthetic devil masks. France, on the other hand, rolls out a dreary existential piano ballad every year, shrugs and goes home again. They're like a rock solid gold guaranteed toilet break country.
