MAKING YOUR MIND UP

MARK:Yes, it’s that time again, as the UK votes for the entry that will come 16th in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Wogan is presenting and already seems quite drunk, the way he is glaring at the autocue and swaying slightly. Fearne Cotton is his girly sidekick, wearing a weird shiny dress and terrible blusher – it looks like someone has drawn red circles on each cheek with a wax crayon. The “panel of experts” consists of Capt Jack from Dorkwood and Mel off Mel and Sue. Mel is wearing a bizarre miniature top hat at a jaunty angle – I later decide that this hat disguises a microcomputer that is beaming useless Eurovision trivia directly into her brain. Mel keeps saying “Eurovish”, when once would have been enough really.

SARAH: I like it that they appear to have taken Morrissey at his word and drafted in proper pop singers - well, pop singers that have actually seen the inside of the Top Ten and appeared on the cover of Smash Hits at least once - instead of the usual crew of stage school shriekers, ex X-factor competitors and session musos looking for a last hit at the Big Time. But of course it is all doomed.

BTW. I hate Fearne Cotton, but have to admit that she did a pretty good job managing Terry and the various popstrel types.

MARK:The first act is Liz off Atomic Kitten. She goes on about being a scouser and liking Eurovision and then shows us the bar she used to work before she was famous. It’s a good job she remembers where it is as she’ll be back there before long. She has a weird corkscrew perm and wears a short yet blousy blue dress to sing a bland and forgettable motown knock-off type song – there’s nothing wrong with it and her voice is quite good, but it isn’t anything great. The best bit is when all the boy dancers get overexcited and start doing backflips and somersaults etc. Capt Jack says something weird about her being a “down home girl” that makes him sound like a record exec from a 1950’s Cliff Richard film, as do all his comments tonight.

SARAH: Well, she can sing a bit. It was OK. But nothing special.

MARK:Next is Brian Harvey, the roughest one out of E17. (Sarah: I thought the roughest one was the bloke who looked like a bald fox, but not in a good way. Oh, hang on, they were all bald. Except for the fat talented one...) He goes for the sympathy vote by going on about his accident a lot, though frankly if I managed to fall out of a car I was driving and run myself over I would rather keep quiet and hope people forgot about it. Jesus, what is going on with his hair? It looks like a mohawk that has slipped to the back of his head. That can’t be a deliberate hairstyle, can it? For his song he wears a black suit with weird gold bits on it like circuit connections. Perhaps after the accident they rebuilt him like a bionic man or something and they need those bits to recharge him. The song is like an Alexander O Neill song and his voice isn’t really up to it. Next! Capt Jack says that it has a crazy groove that will make the beatniks go ape, or something.

SARAH: I kept wondering when he was going to get off that stage and come and fix my light fittings like he promised last week. Time to call Learn Direct, Brian.

MARK:Next is Big Brovas, who had a couple of big hits a few years back that melded the Sound of Music to hip hop beatz way before Gwen Stefani thought of doing it. Can I just say that Terry Wogan should never ever be allowed to say “urban flava” ever again. For the performance the women dress like Victorian hookers and wail away over a groovy string sample while the blokes rap a bit in the background and a couple of goth ballerinas act out goth tragedy (ohs noes, my mum told me I couldn’t listen to “My Chemical Romance” until I’d finished my homework. Why does everything rot and die! I wish I was dead, but in a sexy way like in an Anne Rice novel” etc etc) through the medium of dance. It is actually pretty good and I want it to win, even though it would do terribly at the actual ESC. Capt Jack says a few things that are euphemisms for: “it is performed by black people!”

SARAH: Quite liked it. In the way that I quite liked Big Brovas before my crazy next door neighbour started playing their album very very loud at 6am every day for a month.

MARK:Then we get Cyndi, who is a french singer who wants to do well for the UK and drinks some beer (like proper beer, nothing nice like a 1664 or anything) to prove how anglophile she is. She wears a black formal frock and sings a ballad that is an exact genetic splicing of “Wind beneath my wings” and “My heart will go on”. Ugh. It is very turgid and slow and predictable, complete with rousing key change 3/4 of the way through. Her gimmick is that the backing dancers walk on half way through. Awesome!

SARAH: Bu...buh...she's FRENCH! It's a neo-Napoleonic plot to take over our airwaves with their wavy-armed torch singing! A bas les chanteuses ennuyants avec les key-changes mediocres!

MARK:Then we have Scooch, who are the Fast Food Rockers that time forgot. There is a fat blond bloke with horrid hair, a weasel faced dark haired gaylord and two women who look like make up sales ladies from Debenhams. They are all wearing nasty cheap looking air steward type outfits and sing a song with an aviation theme so they can talk about flying over lots of European cities in a cynical attempt to get inhabitants of those cities to vote for them. It is all v sub Steps, complete with moronic “I’m an aeroplane” dance moves and camp interludes for the gayest bloke to say things like, “Would you like some salted nuts” in a suggestive voice at regular intervals. For the finale they wheel some trolleys around to show that they have a union jack flag on the back. This is really awfully cynical stuff. Capt Jack goes wild in the aisles, in case you were in any doubt that he is also gayer than Christmas.

SARAH: God, I hated this knowing try-hard camp nonsense with a passion. My husband quite liked it.

MARK:Finally we have Beverlei Brown (who??) and Justin out of the Darkness. Justin obviously could not want to be there less. There song is very weird, starting off like a track from an Austin Powers movie and then ranging over a wide number of musical genres, none of them any good. Justin’s high pitched cat strangling vocal does not go with Beverlei’s voice at all. There is a pointless guitar solo. There is a funky horn section. I really do not understand what is going on with this song. Capt Jack praises its “Euro funk style”. I don’t really understand what that means either.

SARAH: I willed this to be good. And my will failed.

MARK:Fearne chats to some foreign people who are in the audience – a Maltese guy and a Ukrainian girl both rate Big Brovas! We want them to win at home too! They show clips of other Euro entries. All I can remember is that there seem to be lots of trannies and also a bloke pretending to be a vampire. My brane cannot process this as yet.

SARAH: Terry mentions that Ireland have already secured their place in the bottom three by choosing something with tin whistles that makes My Lovely Horse look quite professional. Actually, I think My Lovely Horse would do really well if it went into Eurovision. Imagine all those Ukranians and Uzbekistahnians wondering about horse dentists...

MARK: There is a break for the phone voting and then we are back. Fearne is now wearing a different black dress that he makes her rack look plasticky and flat like an Action Man’s chest. Weird. Wogan is now clearly drunk – he drops into a chair like a sack of potatoes, does a link standing on a step with Fearne on the next step down (so she comes up to his elbow!) etc etc. whoever is directing the show also seems to have had a few. We get odd cuts to cameras that aren’t pointed at anything and interviews with people who are basically in total darkness. My BBC working boyfriend is shocked at the poor quality (his exact words “I would expect something like this on BBC3 but…” !!)

Lordi perform again from last year and amuse me and then Brian and Liz get the chop. Byeee! No surprise there. Then Big Brovas get the chop (Noooo!!!) followed by Justin/Bev. Justin races from the stage in record time, no doubt off to instantly sack his manager. We are down to Cyndi and Scooch and they have a “sing off” – both songs sound a lot worse the second time round. They have a little break for more voting and then announce the winner, only Wogan and Fearne each shout out a different name so that no one knows who has won. What a shambles. Fearne has a quick word in Wogan’s drunken ear and he shouts, “Oh right, it is Scooch after all!” and we all shake our heads in disbelief. After Jordan and Daz Sampson I always think that this show cannot get any stranger. I am clearly very naïve.

SARAH: What with all the allegations of phone vote tampering flying about this week, I suppose they couldn't possibly have fixed this one. I fear for the sanity of the Great British Public. Next year, I think the hopefuls should perform in front of a panel of deaf/blind performing monkeys who will then cast their votes by pushing the failed entries into a crocodile-infested lake. That would work as well as any, and possibly solve the unemployed ex-popstrel problem too!

Next up – the semi finals, where they try and whittle down the 60 or so entries into a reasonable number!